I hear the stutter coming from my voice

As I trouble to find the word in Mandarin

Embarassed and ashamed, I switch back

To English, my native mother tongue

They say: what does it mean, to gain the world but

lose your soul?? 

As the policy makers didn’t know, when they enacted it in 1965,

 that English would be the sole-

language we would speak.

That day, I browsed around at a Chinese bookstore

Looking for a book to improve my Mandarin

Feeling lost in a world, supposedly familiar

But, yet so peculiar.

Union Bookstore, it read. Since 1952.

The year in which Lee Kuan Yew fought for 2.

For the rights of the bus drivers

And his political career too.

Ah gong’s[C1]  gong-gong was a Mandarin in China.

He left to escape the guillotine, Anne-Bolean style.

Momma learnt Malay, in preparation for Merger.

And we put on our suits and cigar, English style.

English books, English films, English education.

We took them all.

Just like our colonizers

Who took it all.

But in 2022, here we are.

Where Chinese is the lingua franca

Job interviews in mandarin? And speaking it is a MUST!

Anglophiles like me? We just won’t last!

Perhaps we could turn back time.

Before Malaya and before our parents’ time.

Where schools of a different language weren’t penalised.

Where would Singapore be now?

We would never know.

Until then, I will continue to pay

A hundred friggin’ dollars for my Chinese tuition high.

 [C1]Grandpa’s