Snapshot moments: Vignettes of another city

Iam in the heart of Singapore, doing what shopaholics do: looking at stuff they don’t need and lusting for them. At the moment, on top of my must-own list is a luxurious handbag, created out of creamy leather, buffed to high shine, complete with gold hardware that jangles and sparkles in the overhead lights.

As I stroll through the store, I find more and more merchandise to thrill me and then, suddenly I reach a window that faces the street.

To my horror, I see that the road outside is completely flooded and the sky has turned a deep, sulky grey. Cars are floating in the murky river and people are wading across, holding their footwear aloft.

For a moment, I am disoriented. Am I back in Bangalore, caught in a mid-monsoon storm? Or am I in the perfect city where everything works like clockwork and has suddenly fallen apart?

I manage to get back to my hotel with some difficulty and find that footage of the floods is all over the news. The worst hit is Orchard Road, the central shopping district of the city, where cars were submerged right up to their windshields. A large tree had fallen across three lanes, causing a huge traffic snarl and retailers reportedly lost millions of dollars as their luxury goods had been destroyed by water.

For a city that prides itself on its infrastructure, this was a freak event and I wondered if it would help if they heard that in Bangalore, the thought of flooded streets would not faze anyone.

The not-so-perfect side of Singapore is, however, strangely endearing to someone like me, who is so used to the muddle and bustle of my own home town.

During my whirlwind holiday I find that there is so much about Singapore that we could learn lessons from. It is a country that is constantly re-inventing itself. From being a shoppers’ paradise, it became a lifestyle destination and today, with the arrival of casinos and its very own Universal Studios, it is offering both gaming and entertainment. The city is constantly thinking of new ways of looking at life.

Reinvention is really the key to getting ahead, I realise. The word ‘invent’ means ‘to find’ and therefore, to ‘reinvent’, would mean to ‘find again’, to ‘make over’ or to ‘re-do’. There always has to be a fresh way to do something, a newer way to look or a better way to express yourself. It is also the only way to make people sit up and take notice of you once more.

But like all big cities, there is a bleak side too. I speak to a young girl who has moved from Bangalore to take up a job in Singapore and she says that she is desperately lonely. “I live in a great apartment with its own gym and I work in the heart of the city, but it is very lonely without family and friends.”

I remind her that anyone away from home gets lonely, but she attributes it to the city. “It is sometimes too fast paced, too designer label conscious, too expensive and too artificial for someone like me,” she says.

And as I set out again that evening after the rain, I find everyone else up and about too. The girls are in their pretty shoes, the boys are busy with their limited edition phones.

Life goes on. For them, the flood is already history.