I’ve just come back from the UK on a business trip.
Unlike the trip in June for my sister’s wedding, this trip happened to take
place Autumn when temperatures were dropping. The boss, the junior who came
along and the chairman who is Australian, ended up shuddering for a good
portion of the trip because, well we’re all from places where winter is 16
degrees centigrade and anything below is considered Arctic.
I got lucky in the sense that I discovered “heattech”from Uniqlo, which helped deal with the cold. However, whilst I managed to deal
with the cold better than my colleagues, I wasn’t so warm and comfortable that
I couldn’t see a group inhabits London – the homeless.
Go to anywhere in London, and you will inevitably find
someone asking you for spare change. You will inevitably see a section of any
given tube station, which has become a makeshift shelter by someone homeless,
who has subsequently put up a sign asking for donations. Take this fellow who
had camped outside Tower Hill Tube Station as an example:
In a way, living with the homeless was what put me off
London and made Singapore so much more appealing. I lived in Soho back then. I
was where the “fun” happens to be. The amount of wealth in the area is
staggering and as my mother often reminds me, I probably would have been more
successful had a I settled in London instead of making my way back to
Singapore. I think of people on leftist campuses who would go on the human rights
bandwagon the moment they knew I was from Singapore and I’d be thinking, “ya, sure,
we can be a***holes for locking up a few middle-class people for minor things
but as a society, we’d never allow our young to make homelessness a lifestyle
choice.”
As a matter of disclosure, that was the position I
took back then, when I lived off Daddy. I’ve been through a few rough patches
(Hotel 81 in Geylang was once home) and years in corporate insolvency have
shown me the callous way in which Singapore thrives on what can only be politely
called slave labour. What’s more, we’re starting
to show very visible signs of the same problem that London has – homeless people
or people sleeping out in the rough (which, for the record is not happening
because they think its fun).
The man that I am now has a lot more sympathy for the
downtrodden than the student that I was once. Back then, I had the luxury of
being take care of by Daddy’s money. Today, I look back as someone who has
never “taken-off” and emotionally, its easier to accept that people simply don’t
make it in life.
However, I still find it hard to accept that anyone
would allow themselves to be in a situation where they had to sleep rough in
minus temperatures. I can accept that for whatever corporate opportunities I
didn’t get or take, I’ve had the good fortune to feel inspired enough to have
the mindset to the see the potential in the things that I’ve done. I take the
example of being a waiter and managing to find my IIM (Indian Institutes of
Management) gig and opened several doors to law firms for the liquidator who employed
me for nearly a decade. I don’t take particular pride of being in corporate insolvency
but I see it as a means to getting through to places.
Being able to be optimistic even in the direst of
circumstances has kept me going. Even as I push 50, I still function with that
intrinsic belief that somehow, somewhere something will click.
For the guys living in the tube stations, that’s clearly
not the case. Life is merely about making it to the next fix. What hope is
there for them?
This is probably the main question that we need to ask
as Christmas approaches. If you read the Gospels, you will see that Jesus was
effectively the world’s first God of Hobos. There is no record of the man having
a job beyond a stint in the family carpentry business, let alone any record of
the man owning the cloths on his back.
Whilst Jesus was probably the first God who joined the
ranks of the Hobos, his message was inevitably one of joy and optimism, as I
was reminded by the Priest conducting third advent mass last Sunday.
Now, I am of limited intelligence, so I shall not pretend
I know how to solve problems. However, I do believe that churches, temples,
mosque and all forms of religious organisations have a role to play in helping
the homeless get onto their feet. They should do as Jesus told them to do (Jesus’s
message is applicable to everyone – Buddhist should take note that the Dalai
Lama has said he is a Boddhisatva and Muslims revere Jesus as a Prophet of
Islam). Go out – serve the downtrodden, give them a reason to live and take joy
in doing so. Its only when these things happen will we start to resemble a
society which can itself vaguely Godly.
1 comment
I am banned from openly having elite friends just because I really do spoil the market. I have been looking for a 'create' magazine when makers can find relief that there are other makers out there and if you have a union, some people call it labour, you find strength in unity and less fear of exposing your natural make up.
Post a Comment