The passing of a gentleman

I can't say I ever really knew him. I guess I must have when I was growing up. But in the haste & flurry of trying to get to where I am today, he must have somehow left my consciousness. Not until the announcement of his passing on the radio this morning, did I remember this long-serving politician and founding father of modern Singapore.

Often in the shadow of the more illustrious leaders like Lee Kuan Yew and other successive prime ministers and presidents, I suppose he was a typical government servant who preferred to labour behind the scenes.

I never knew much about him. Almost everything I knew about him, I learnt from the moving documentary commemorating his death on TV tonight. Curiously, he was the man who made the first speech on TV in Singapore and who advocated the proliferation of TV as a mass media to cultivate the intellectual mindset of Singaporeans. Most fitting.

From the documentary, I learnt that he was a quiet and gentle man, refined, well-dressed, and with a quiet elegant air about him. Yet in his public persona, making speeches to the masses, he often came across as a hard-hitting industrial union leader capable of rousing a 2nd revolution in Singapore. Therein lies the conviction - here was a man who truly cared about Singapore. An idealogue who genuinely believed in a multiracial Singaporean Singapore. Without farsighted forebears like him, we might have remained plunged in divisiveness and segregation.

I discovered too that he literally devoured books. He was a true connoisseur of knowledge, ideas and wisdom. A true seeker of views & opinions. His fervency puts me, whose greatest tolerance for reading is a 3-page article in a magazine, to great shame.

I have always been slow to respect man. They are but mere human beings, with limitations every other way. But here was a man truly worthy of our respect.

And like he mused when asked what he would like on his epitaph, "Here lies a man. We are sorry to know that he is gone.", I am sorry to know that he is gone.

And here lies my fear. We are witnessing not just the passing of a gentleman, but the passing on of an entire generation of gentlemen who drew and breathed ideas from fellow intellectuals, from empowering convictions in books & history, who were quiet and elegant intellectuals, and with an industrious and fighting spirit. In our generation, we were fortunate enough to straddle a little of the past, and lean into the future. Our grandparents lived through the war. We grew up witnessing street hawkers along the Esplanade, bread makers who delivered freshly baked bread on their bicycles and put them in your basket lowered down from the 3rd storey in exchange for 50cents, and experienced bus conductors on crowded public buses who could collect money from passengers, punch holes in tickets, check on errant passengers, hassle passengers to move to the back of the bus, press the bell for alighting passengers, watch for the moment to signal the bus driver to move on with another tote of the bell, and balance themselves without holding on to any handles or bars all at the same time! They single-handedly epitomised OMO way before the word was even invented! On the other hand, we were the generation which witnessed the accelerated development of information technology. We moved from being pen pals laboriously penning out sweet little letters to friends home & abroad to e-mails, internet chats and blogging. We moved from pagers to handphones. We moved from journals & diaries to PDAs. We do things our parents never even dreamt of - we wakeboard on weekends, go trekking in the Himalayas on holidays, and yearn to own a car (mobility) even before we can buy a house (stability).

The next generation? A generation that demands instant satiation of desires and needs. A generation that litters english language essays with sms-speak. A generation where diplomacy means being able to wrangle a good deal off EBay without losing one's cool.

Will we still be able to find quiet intellectuals with simple pleasures in life such as enjoying a good book and exchanging views passionately? In a generation that would have worked in at least 15 different capacities and places by the time of retirement, would the virtue of hard work survive? At a time when face-to-face interaction and heart-to-heart talks are conducted via webcams and MSN chats, how long will we be able to practice tolerance of one another and appreciation of each other's different culture and values?

As we mourn the passing of a gentleman, I peer with trepidation into the near future when an entire generation of gentlemen passes on.