“T-A-X-I” is like a façade for those not actually waiting for something to whisk them off on their merry way.
Stark white words on a blue background spell salvation for those unwilling or unable to commute with the plebeian masses. Yes, I’m waiting, but I’m not going anywhere, silly! The Starbucks latte rests on the ground beside him like some abandoned, inverted space capsule. Swirled and whirled like the Ganges in a cup; endorsed by a precious, enigmatic river goddess enshrined in a green ring.
He sits almost cat-like, guarding his territory. Don’t step beyond the third cigarette butt! His eyes capture the crowd: Miniature iris films of strange men in Barry Manilow t-shirts and of book club friends, the subtitles of their conversations sifting through the sieve of crowd and landing at his feet. Diluted, polluted and vaguely wistful.
Like the two people whose hands seem to possess a life of their own – touching, barely, and then withdrawing in some kind of silent dance. The camera pans to their faces, raised eyebrows or a lustful glance at a passing Ferrari betraying nothing, feigning insouciance. But he knows the stage directions innately. (Her pulse lives in her fingers for that minute; waiting, beating.)
He acknowledges the voyeuristic nature of this activity: Worse than watching what people do is watching what they don’t do. Almost criminal. The crowd is a living, breathing, heaving mass of decision and emotion; its nuances in personality are dictated by the sun, the rain, and John Little clearance sales which seem to happen all year round. He says that the crowd isn’t made up of individuals, no! No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main; if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less! This facilitates his vivid demonstration of the interconnectedness of living life. He wants you to understand that living life is not a tautology (haven’t you heard of the living dead?), and that he is not waiting for a taxi at the taxi-stand.
No, he is waiting instead for the grand epiphany that presents itself in every action and change of direction that the capricious crowd takes. Perhaps it is untenable that it be called an epiphany - because it manifests itself so often and so quickly; but it is always a sudden and complete understanding. An understanding that may be illustrated by a quick and colourful analogy.
In a completely hypothetical situation, a man places a banana peel on the ground with the intention of making someone slip, positioning it in an area most likely to be trespassed upon by some unsuspecting passer-by. A woman traveling at approximately 0.5km/h (due to shopping bags) steps on that hypothetical banana peel, and skids zero point four five metres on her twelve-inch stilettos before crashing to the ground, injuring her head and damaging the coffee-maker that she bought less than fifteen minutes ago. Because she is now unconscious, she is whisked off to the hospital with her purchases (sans coffee-maker) and eventually dies, leaving behind 2 husbands and 5 children.
The hypothetical hearse transporting the body to the crematorium is being driven by a transvestite who feels extreme sympathy towards the woman’s family (and also, extreme attraction towards the woman’s second husband), and he/she stops by a coffee shop for a sobering mug of teh-c. Swigging down copious amounts of that opiate of Coffee Shop Uncles and Aunties, he/she unwittingly spills that concoction onto his/her well-pressed pants, and upon realising his/her carelessness, immediately launches into an impressive display of his/her fluency in profanity.
The launderette manager flinches as he walks past him/her, well-veiled disgust spreading in his chest like salad-dressing on a lettuce-leaf bed of prejudices and homophobia. As a disguise, he decides to overcompensate for this irrational fear by smiling what he believes to be a friendly smile. He/She is hardly taken in by this seeming embracement of what he/she is, but is amused by the launderette manager’s feeble attempt.
The pants are done, and he/she puts down the tattered copy of HERworld and goes to the washing machine. He/she tries to open the cover of the washing machine, but cannot. So, he/she pulls harder, and when it refuses to budge, harder some more. Eventually, with an almighty heave, he/she manages to wrench the entire lid of the washing machine (in all its hypothetical stainless steel glory) clean off its hinges, the momentum of the action sending it flying over his/her head and into the temple of one Mr. Johnny Depth a.k.a. Man Who Placed Banana Peel On Floor With Intention Of Harming Someone.
Johnny Depth dies in hospital due to severe head trauma, leaving this world with nothing but the satisfaction of having caused a stranger to Stumble and Fall and Die. In this case, by inflicting damage to someone else, Johnny Depth has indirectly inflicted a not dissimilar damage upon himself, thus augmenting the credibility of the Karmic theory.
What goes around comes around, he says now, stubbing out his forty-sixth cigarette right smack in the middle of the Starbucks logo, causing the goddess of the Ganges to deliquesce in an unhappy stream of plastic. She isn’t a goddess anymore though, because goddesses have to be pretty - you can’t be melted and be pretty. And maybe the woman getting into the taxi thinks she is a goddess, because she doesn’t think twice about throwing that piece of lipstick-stained tissue paper on the ground before barking “Uncle, Sembawang!” She slams the door, the words caught in between the inside of the taxi and the outside, flapping miserably as they drive off.
Everyone in the queue shuffles to the left in synchrony, knowing that some woman who is paid two dollars an hour will come and sweep up the discarded tissue, silently lamenting the deplorable behaviour of Singaporeans Nowadays. They forget that they’re Singaporean too, invariably connected to every person wearing an orange CWO jacket, or every inconsiderate individual who reserves a table at the hawker centre with a packet of tissue paper. And whether they like it or not, they’re connected to every elitist/sexist/racist/ageist/Communist bastard on the face of this Earth.
The way he and I see it, we’re all connected. To this planet, to the things living on this planet, and things that exist beyond the realms of our human perception.
There is a theory called Six Degrees of Separation, which basically theorises that human beings are connected through relationships with at most six people. This means, for example, that only six people stand between you and Azikiwe in Nigeria. So going by this theory, it also stands to reason that from you to yourself, there is at most only twelve degrees of separation. Six between you and another person, and another different six leading back from that person to you.
You do something, and the entire web of humanity trembles with the weight of that action. It is that realisation that keeps him there with his triple-shot Irish Cream latte, his caffeinated existence superseding the nebulous existence of the crowd, which is a whole and unbroken entity of being, extending across borders and cultures and species and time and unreciprocated feeling. He knows that he is not a discreet, discrete observer, but rather a part of the web that keeps him and threatens to pull him away from his taxi- and people-watching comfort, that traps within its threads the deviants, the mavericks, the dissenters, the rebels. They think that they march to the beat of their own drum, but they are sorely mistaken.
The blue taxis hover around the bend, waiting to swoop in on the next victim. The potential passengers stream out of the entrance/exit, waiting to be taken. He sits there, waiting. Every stick he smokes expands his territory while simultaneously narrowing his airways.
