Cook a Pot of Curry

We managed to squeeze in some time to watch Alfian Saat's "Cook a Pot of Curry" yesterday afternoon, amidst our always-busy schedule.

It has been a long time since we watched a play , the last one was Hansel and Gretel last year.

The few plays by Alfian I have watched have always been impressive. I like the way he discusses political views in a manner that is direct enough to get the point across, but with humour and sarcasm along the way.

 

 

This play touches on something that is probably on every local's mind, in one way or another - is Singapore under threat? Will there even be Singapore with all the influx of foreigners coming in? Are we going to be the 'foreigners' in our very own country? Who exactly is the minority now?

 

The play started off with a scene of the curry incident. If you remember, a couple of years back, the newspaper ran an article of how a couple from China made a complaint against a local Indian couple for cooking the 'smelly' curry. Although the issue was already settled then , it sparked off a lot of interest in the general public and antagonized everyone further to the extent that a "Cook Curry Day" was introduced - just to remind foreigners to assimilate the cultures of the locals into their lives if they want to stay in Singapore.

 

The play went on to discuss, through a series of interviews by their 6-member cast, other issues pertaining to us Singaporeans - namely, breakdowns of trains, the White Paper, language barriers, lost of identity , escalation of property prices and many others.

 

Humour was injected to make things slightly more light-hearted but as I told my husband, the afternoon there set me thinking (not that I haven't thought about these issues before ) even more about such matters . Because it was presented to us through the "in-your-face" manner, I could not help but feel sad at the thought of how close we are to lose our identity as Singaporeans. You know how sometimes, we just brush it away....

 

Wait... in the first place, what exactly is the Singaporean identity?

 



 

Do catch the play as it will be worth your money and thinking brain cells. If I am not wrong, the last show is on 20 July .

It is a good way to do some reflections on how we think and behave as we approach our National Day in exactly a month.