When the Dead and the Living Can't Co-Exist

Some of you may have read about would-be residents at BTO estate Fernvale Lea getting upset over the release of government plans to build a columbarium next to their new homes. There will be those among us who will wonder what’s the big deal, and downplay the whole episode as a bunch of narrow-minded and self-centered folks making a lot of noise over a petty issue. Why raise a storm over such matters, and why even go to the extent of demanding for refunds?

Well, for starters, understand that Singapore being a multi-racial society means we have to be sensitive to the religious and cultural sensitivities of the various ethnicities that make up our community. We may share a common nationality, by choice or not, but we don’t necessarily share the same cultural and religious beliefs, and certainly not everyone is a bigot who thinks he/she is mightier than others because of an open-minded Western exposure coupled with born-again Christian beliefs.

Not that I am singling out any one religious faith, but if you were someone who really understands the cultures of the ethnic communities that make up Singapore, you’d realise that the pre-dominant Buddhists and their Taoist/Hindu/Muslim counterparts still find mixing the spaces reserved for the living and the dead a taboo — and it doesn’t matter if some Grand Abbot or Imam somewhere agrees with the government policies and says otherwise, because you can’t change cultural mindsets overnight, so yes, there will be people who find it appaling that the government planner who came up with the idea would even have the gall to put that idea onto paper in the first place.

As the elderly parent of a friend of mine said, “you sure all these scholars know what they are doing?”

And not to put down the scholars in our midst too, because I’m sure the above line has already seen one or two government scholars aiming their dictionaries and encyclopedias my direction for a good throw. Number one, I wasn’t the one who said it, I’m just a messenger; and number two, chances are whoever put up a paper for those plans was indeed a scholar.

But for those of you who still think Fernvale Lea residents are over-reacting, let’s put up a different scenario, shall we? Say it isn’t a columbarium, but a landfill or a maximum security prison complex instead –> would the same self-righteous holier-than-thou crowd now say people are being myopic and self-centered in their thinking?

Because the last time I read about similar reports, even our liberal-minded Western counterparts went up in arms to protest against a garbage dump built right at their backyard in the United Kingdom (see report here). Now surely the same logic applies, that people have to be more open-minded, and understand that because of space constraints, and for the greater benefit of the larger community, we have to be more accommodating? Oddly enough, that wasn’t the case, and I don’t see many outsiders being critical there.

Of course, someone will start to counter that we cannot compare garbage dumps with columbariums, one’s trash, and we show respect to the dead. Alright, what about the maximum security facility example then? Would people find it offensive? Or what if in place of a columbarium, we were talking graveyards instead? I’m sure even some of my ang moh friends would shudder at the thought of having a cemetery built next to their homes.

So what is it exactly that makes us uncomfortable? The fact that we keep the dead and the living close to one another?

The answer, surprisingly, is no. I believe not many people, though the superstitious minority may think otherwise, would believe having a columbarium built near their estate would mean residents of the flats would now have to encounter spooky apparitions during the 7th Lunar Month…you know, like the legendary long-haired lady that bears an uncanny resemblance to Sadako in The Ring sharing your elevator ride?

When you think about it, I don’t think there’s anything creepy about my late ah-zor (great grandmother) visiting me at night now that her resting place is nearer, seeing how much she had doted on me when she was alive.

Instead, I think the real reason the new residents are upset is because the plan for the columbarium wasn’t revealed when residents were making their purchase decisions. Had it been made known, the buying decisions would be very different, and those who take issue would at least have the opportunity to decide otherwise, and if they decided to proceed anyway, that’s where we can whack them at the back of their heads and say, “Eh goondu, it was already made known lah, complain for what?”

But instead, they weren’t given that opportunity, so now they have a good mind to whack the head of whomever came up with the idea.

Especially if, from their perspective, the existence of the columbarium would now mean a reduction in the potential resale value of their flats in 5 years’ time. Is that an issue? I think it is, with any home-buyer from any nationality.