THE MALADY AND THE CURE (1989)
Catherine Lim

This is the strange story of one Mr Sai Koh Phan, one of the faceless
thousands in Singapore, rescued from the facelessness by a malady.  Mr
Sai Koh Phan, civil servant, is now a celebrity of some sort in the country
and region, and since his case will be presented by his doctor at the next
Geneva International Conference of Remarkable Disorders, there is a
chance that he will be known to the world as well, at least the medical world.

        The malady has, moreover, created considerable ripples in the
political world.  But for adroit top-level manoeuvring, it could have resulted in
serious political repercussions for Singapore.

        I'm only a humble civil servant.  I suffered much, but I'm glad that
in the end it was for the good of so many Singaporeans,' says Mr Sai Koh Phan,
when he is interviewed by a reporter from Newsweek who asks him how it feels
to be the centre of so much attention.  And he repeats, 'I'm only a humble
civil servant, and I'm glad to be of service to my country,' when
another reporter, from Time, asks him how it feels to have helped avert a
national crisis.  He adds, with a sudden access of gratitude.  'I must express
my deepest thanks to my government and to my doctor, Dr Sindoo, without
either of whom this miracle would not have been possible.'

        Now gratitude has been the abiding principle of all Mr Sai Koh Phan's
actions, a gratitude constantly evoked by the daily reminders of his
secure, well-paying job as the principal of a school, his well-furnished
two-storey semi-detached house where he lives with his wife, four sons and
mother-in-law, his other equally well-furnished apartment which he is
renting to a Japanese bank executive, his sizeable bank account.  To
comprehend the full extent of his rise from the deprivations of his
childhood, Mr Sai Koh Phan matches each deprivation against the
solidity of present comforts, so that daily routines in the home become so many
cautionary tales to his children.

        'Chicken?  I never ate chicken except once a year, on the first day of
Chinese New Year, so eat up all that chicken on your plate, and be
grateful,' he would admonish his children.

        'Air-conditioning?  I shared a room with three brothers and two
sisters on the top-floor of a shophouse in Chinatown.  We had two mattresses to
share among us.  Most of the time, I slept on rice-sacks.  Now my son says he
can't study except in an air-conditioned room!'

        Mr Sai Koh Phan's gratitude to the country that has given him and his
family this good life, is of deep-welling, not the merely perfunctory
kind, and extends retrospectively on behalf of those ancestors who had come
from China with nothing but the proverbial shirt on their backs, and on
their behalf, Mr Sai Koh Phan's eyes fill with grateful tears.

        Mr Sai Koh Phan's position as principal of a large primary school
offers him plenty of opportunities for the expression of this emotion, for the
school is in the constituency of a very active Member of Parliamentary
who likes to make visits to show up Mr Sai Koh Phan's school as the model
of a well-run, well-disciplined school.  Mr Sai Koh Phan is all effusiveness
when the Member of Parliament comes calling, he is even more fervid when the
Minister of State for education drops in one day, and when the Senior
Minister for Education himself indicates that he would like to come for
a visit, Mr Sai Koh Phan knows that he has reached the apotheosis of his
career and there is nothing more that he could wish for in this life. 
The depth of the gratitude expressed in his welcoming speech that day has
been without parallel.

        Now so powerful an emotion must have a channel for its proper
ordering, and Mr Sai Koh Phan has found the perfect channel in the national
campaigns. The comprehensiveness of the campaigns, covering nearly every aspect of
then Singaporean's life, from the way he grows his hair, to the size of his
family, together with the regularity with which they occur in the
course of the individual's life, has provided the ideal framework within which
the awesome power of Mr Sai Koh Phan's emotions can be organised and
structured. Hence the campaigns have provided the guiding principle of Mr Sai Koh
Phan's existence, and he has never felt more contented and happy.  The
campaigns have provided and overriding philosophy that can be expressed in his
daily life at work and at home.  Mr Sai Koh Phan needs not the posters and
advertisements and handbills to remind him of what he must do and must
not do.  For the injunctions and admonitions are etched deep in his
consciousness so that any infringements, no matter how small, are
instantly felt and appropriately responded to.  Long hair is frowned upon, so a
single hair springing up in defiant out of the neatly cropped head of a pupil,
is immediately noticed and seized upon by Mr Sai Koh Phan in his vigilant
rounds of the school.  Mr Sai Koh Phan likes to be a good example to
his pupils, so he wears a crew-cut and no hair of his will be seen to even
remotely violate the official stipulation of the above-the-back collar
hair length, and he continues to keep the crew-cut long after the campaign
against long hair is over.  Mr Sai Koh Phan prides himself on being
different from those who are quite content to fulfil only minimum
requirements or who grudgingly comply because they fear the fines that
come with non-compliance.  Mr Sai Koh Phan believes in going the extra mile;
indeed, his sense of gratitude will not let him do less.  And that is
why he not only cuts his hair very short, but keeps it that short, beyond
campaign time.  And that is also why he has four children when the campaign
urges Singaporeans to have three.  The age gap between his two elder sons and
the two younger ones matches exactly the time gap between the campaign to
'Have Three - or more, if you can afford.'

        This full, total and whole-hearted response to the campaigns has not
been without personal sacrifices, but it would take more than personal
sacrifices to daunt Mr Sai Koh Phan.  There is the Incident of the Bee, there is
the Incident of Xiu, both of which vividly testify to Mr Sai Koh Pahn's
readiness to put up with any discomfort in his commitment to the
campaigns.

        The Incident of the Bee: Mr Sai Koh Phan stands at attention during
the singing of the National Anthem at the morning school assembly in the
school field, his chest pushed out, his shoulders pushed up, his fist
clenched, his facial muscles taut with the effort of a full display of patriotic
fervour. Now this position of ramrod straightness is not without any cost to a
body long trained to respond to a built-in dictum that crawling is a more
effective mode of locomotion than walking, and the constant demands
made of that poor body in terms of abrupt changes from the bowing, bobbing and
scraping motions top perfect erectness, must be great indeed.  But that
is of little concern to Mr Sai Koh Phan.  He stands, muscle-taut, singing
the National Anthem, when suddenly a bee works itself up his left trouser
leg and stings him right up there.  It is a large and most vicious bee, and
the pain it inflicts is excruciating, but Mr Sai Koh Phan's disciplined
patriotism will not allow even the smallest tremor in that superbly
erect frame, so he goes through the whole morning's ceremony, perhaps only a
little paler than usual, and it is only when the last strains of the
song have faded away in the air, and he is back in his office that Mr Sai
Koh Phan groans a little, slumps back in his chair and calls for help.

        The incident of Xiu: Mr Sai Koh Phan gets a directive that
schoolchildren should have their names changed to their Hanyu Pinyin forms, in line
with the 'Speak Mandarin, Avoid Dialects' campaign.  Mr Sai Koh Phan, always
careful to set the example, immediately changes his name to the desired
form, posts it up outside his office and proceed to change the names of
everyone in his school and household.  His two older sons are aggrieved
at the loss of the western names that they have given themselves, and
protest that they will not be known by the new names which they find difficult
to pronounce and which they say will make them feel ridiculous.

        'Don't be ridiculous,' snaps Mr Sai Koh Phan.  "Ricky", indeed. 
"Chester", indeed.  Evidence of the harmful moral influences from the West.  From
now onwards, you will respond only to your Hanyu Pinyin names, both at home
and in school.  Is that clear?'

        The younger of the two, a rebellious, sturdy fellow of fifteen,
ignores the father and runs after his dog, a handsome Alsatian.

        'Bonzo!  Bonzo!' he calls, pointedly ignoring his father.

        'Bonzo, indeed!' cries Mr Sai Koh Pahn, smitten with guilt because he
has not been vigilant enough about his children's behaviour, allowing them,
like the rest of Singapore's young people, to slide into Western decadence. 
But it is not too late to effect corrective measures.

        Bonzo, a highly spirited dog, is unable to respond to its new Hanyu
Pinyin name of Xiu, undergoes an identity crisis, and shows increasingly
bizarre behaviour.

        'If that stupid dog of yours does not stop it, I shall send him to the
vet to be put to sleep!' roars Mr sai Koh Phan who, for the third time,
shakes his leg free from the warm stream of Xui's piss.  Xiu's disorientation
is very real indeed; he takes to barking at the cageful of canaries whose
names of Goldie, Chirpie, Louie and Randy have been changed to Jin, Xuan, Lie
and Ran respectively.

        But domestic crises of this sort are quite inconsequential to Mr Sai
Koh Phan, and he continues to be very fulfilled and happy man.  Alas for
him! The fulfillment and happiness are less real and enduring than he
thinks.  In the twentieth year of the total service of himself to the campaigns,
the Malady strikes Mr Sai Koh Phan.  It is no ordinary malady.  It strikes
with a vengeance, so that not a single organ in Mr Sai Koh Phan's body is
free from its vicious power. Mr Sai Koh Phan suffers stabs of pain in his legs that travel rapidly
up hisn spine and cause him to contort his facial features grotesquely; wild
ragings in his stomach tie up all his intestines into impossibly tight knots of
pain that cause him to double up and gasp for help; fiery streams course up
and down his throat, threatening to burst through its walls.

        Now even such sufferings would have been tolerable to Mr Sai Koh Phan
if they served his ambition, an increasingly urgent one, of winning the
Ideal Civil Servant of the Year award.  But instead they frustrate this
ambition, for they render him totally incapable of attending meetings, hosting
the friendly meet-your-Member-of-Parliament sessions, supervising the
school's Community Consciousness activities, etc., all of which would certainly
conduce to the winning of that award.  Mr Sai Koh Phan is most
distressed, and so his Member of Parliament who is anxious for him to have that
high honour.  No doctor is able to help Mr Sai Koh Phan, and then in
despair, upon the recommendation of a friend, he goes to see Dr Sindoo, who is
known as the best doctor in Singapore, and also the most eccentric.

        The cure for the malady is simple, says the doctor, and Mr Sai Koh
Phan'sn eyes light up with hope.

        'Spit,' advises the doctor, 'Preferably 3 times a day.'

        'What?' says Mr Sai Koh Phan.

        'Be discourteous to your mother-in-law,' says the doctor.  'Also three
times a day, and in dialect.'

        'What?' cries Mr Sai Koh Phan and now he is thinking that all those
rumors about Dr Sindoo being a little mad must be true.

        'Litter - once a day will be sufficient, I think,' says Dr Sindoo,
'And when you next watch TV and the National Anthem is sung, scratch your
leg. And your armpits if you like.'

        'What?'  shouts Mr Sai Koh Phan, now convinced that the doctor is mad.
He falls back on his chair, thoroughly distressed.  'How can I do that,'
he wails, 'I'm a civil servant!'

        'And getting less civil and more servant,' mutters the doctor.  'You
have to do all these, I'm afraid, if you want to be cured of this malady.'

        'You ask me to spit, to litter, to swear, to go against the very
campaigns that I've been so faithful to for the last twenty years?' gasps Mr Sai
Koh Phan.  'Spit?  Litter?  How can I desecrate the very soil that I
worship, both on my own and my ancestors behalf?  How can I scandalize my fellow
Singaporeans?  Doctor, you are asking me to do the impossible!'

        'You don't have to do it publicly,' says Dr Sindoo.  'I never asked
you to. You can do it privately, in your own home or garden at night.  Nobody
need see.  But it is important that you do it.  Unknown to you, your body
has not reacted very kindly to all those years of subjugation to the campaigns,
and has been building up a mechanism of protest that is only now beginning
to manifest itself in these angry knots and twists of pain.  They could
get worse, I warn you.  The only way to break up this mechanism is to do
precisely the opposite of what the campaigns have been making you do. 
In this way, slowly but surely, you will placate your body and calm it
into a state when it will have no need of this mechanism of defiance, and thus
dispense with it.  I am afraid that this is your only hope.'

        'Oh, how can I?  How can I?' wails Mr Sai Koh Phan.  'How can I defile
my beloved country by doing all these dastardly things on her soil?  I am
a son of the soil!'

        The doctor gets a little impatient, mutters, 'Night soil, more like,'
and then says aloud, 'Don't be silly.  I never told you to do all these
things publicly.  You can do them privately, very privately, in your bathroom,
for instance.  The most important thing is to pluck up enough guts to do
the exact opposite of what you have been trained to do for the last twenty
years.'

        'I can't!  I can't!' weeps Mr Sai Koh Phan.  'I'm a true son!'

        'That's the best unfinished sentence I've ever heard,' mutters Dr.
Sindoo who gets more irreverent as he gets more impatient.  He says, 'It's up
to you, Mr Sai Koh Phan.  There is no other cure for this malady.'

        Mr Sai Koh Phan leaves the doctor's clinic in a daze.  He walks into
the bright sunshine outside, and he looks at the many campaign posters
around, and the pride and gratitude once more surges into his heart, in
recollection of years of  total fidelity to their admonitions:

        Don't litter

        Don't spit

        Don't stop at two

        Don't dirty public toilets

        Don't sniff glue

        Don't waste water

        Be courteous

        Eat more wheat

        Eat frozen meat

        Don't breed mosquitoes

        Don't change lanes while driving

        Say 'Good morning' and 'Thank you' in Mandarin

        Don't fill your plates to overflowing at buffet lunches

        Don't be 'kia su'

        Plant a tree

        Don't grow long hair

        Don't grow

        Don't

        But the pleasurable sensation is short-lived.  A furious knot of pain
explodes in the left side of his chest and races up his throat to
emerge through his open mouth as strangulated gasps and grunts.

        Mr Sai Koh Phan, clutching his throat, is back at Dr Sindoo's clinic. 
He pleads again and again, 'Help me, Doctor.  I want to be well again, I
want to win the Ideal Civil Servant of the Year Award.  But I can't do all
these things that you told me to.  As I told you, I am a son of the soil and
will die before I desecrate it.  Please help me by finding me another cure,
Doctor, I beg you!'

        And that's when Dr Sindoo has an idea for a cure.  But it is an idea
for whose implementation the assistance of the Member of Parliament has
first to be sought, and then the Singapore Government's and finally the
Malaysian Government's.  The Member of  Parliament listens very carefully and
then swings into action.  In a series of highly secretive meetings, he is
able to convince the Government that the proposed measures, elaborate though
they are, are worthwhile taking for a much valued civil servant, and when
later, it is learnt that many other civil servants suffer from the same malady
and are therefore in need of the same cure, the decision is unanimously
taken, at Cabinet level, to approach the Malaysian Government at once for
their co-operation.  The approach is made with the greatest tact and caution,
and the request with utmost grace and humility, for the well-being of the
civil service is at stake.  Owing to the extreme urgency in Mr Sai Koh Phan's
particular case, the Malaysian government is gracious enough to allow
for the immediate implementation of the plan, even before the necessary
formalities have been gone through.  Mr Sai Koh Phan and family move to
a house situated near the Causeway, and as soon as he is on Malaysian
soil, is able to carry out the rest of the prescription, that is, he shouts,
curses, swears, all in dialect, then litters.  He does all these with a degree
of enthusiasm and abandon that surprises Dr Sindoo, and after all these
ablutions, returns to Singapore thoroughly cleansed, ready to begin the
day's work.  He says he feels very much better, and actually looks
forward to each day's preparation of litter (put very neatly in a plastic bag
by his wife) for scattering on other people's soil.

        His Member of Parliament is happy to see this prized civil servant on
the road to recovery, and he prides himself on being instrumental in the
setting up of a most unusual scheme by which thousands of Singaporean civil
servants become cured of their malady.  A special plot of ground has been
procured from the Malaysian Government had originally intended to use as a
dumping site for industrial effluents.  (Some believe that the plot is being
rented out for an undisclosed sum, whereas others believe it is a gift, a
token of friendly co-operation).  Here Singaporeans come by the hundreds daily
to do on other soil what they have been forbidden to do on their own, and
from which they return, quite refreshed and ready to be ideal civil servants
all over again.  It is a strange sight: usually grave-faced, bespectacled,
civil servants in conservative white shirts and dark trousers wildly
shouting, stomping, spitting, laughing, littering, hurling rambutan rinds in the
air, tossing peanut shells over their shoulders, swearing in the dialect of
their ancestors, quarrelling, fighting.  Sometimes a playful competition is
held, to see whose spit lands furthest, whose peanut shells, 'kana' seeds or
melon-seed husks pile up most quickly.  There is even a very
good-natured contest to see whose Hokkien or Cantonese ditty is the coarsest.  The
method is unfailingly effective, for the constrictions and knots and
tightnesses disappear.

        Dr Sindoo will  deliver a paper at the coming Geneva Convention and no
doubt the unique malady and its equally unique cure will create much
interest in the medical world.  Mr Sai Koh Phan, to his great joy, has
been nominated for the Ideal Civil Servant Award, and if he wins that much
coveted award, will give due credit to his doctor, and his Member of
Parliament; indeed, Mr Sai Koh Phan has already prepared the acceptance
speech in which the names of Dr Sindoo and his Member of Parliament
come up for grateful, honourable mention at least four times.

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