Eye Sore? Or the Last Remaining Historical Relic

Somewhere in the heart of town, there is a monumental and rather imposing colonial building that serves reminder of time past. Here, you can board a train bound for Malaysia, with stopovers at big, small, sleepy and bustling towns and cities throughout the Malay Peninsula. If you want a sense of being transported back in time, to the part of Singapore’s history when it was still part of the Federation of Malaya (stop short of watching superficial Mediacorp productions like ‘Little Nonya’), this is the place to be.

Today, it is a thorn in the flesh for the masters of the land; legally, this plot of land along Keppel Road belongs to Malaysia. Hence, if you are taking the train from this building known as the Tanjong Pagar KTM Train Station, you are stepping onto Malaysian soil; the clear manifestation of that territorial right is that you have to clear Malaysian immigration customs before boarding the train. Upon reaching Woodlands, you alight the train and clear Singapore customs. If you are awake as you are reading this, you will realise something amiss: shouldn’t the sequence of immigration clearance be the OTHER WAY round? I have wondered myself; but this isn’t a question for students of rocket science, but of local history. Singapore was part of the Malayan Federation until it was unceremoniously booted out by Malaya.

History aside, this building stands to tell us that something has given way to the relentless push for progress and development. Not that being progressive is an evil, but this country pursues efficiency and economic expediency to a fault. So many historical relics have made way for modern, glossy architecture, with little human spirit. Can new shopping malls like ION Orchard, Iluma and Orchard Central tell us something about our identity? I fear for the younger generation that they will become a ‘lost generation’, only concerned with their own monetary and selfish pursuits. If that scenario comes true, we might regret FOLLOWING the path of economic expediency, as expounded by the masters of the land, to the point of having reduced everyone to an ‘economic animal’. By which time, hopefully, the Tanjong Pagar Train Station will STILL be around, perhaps to out-live the ‘receiver’ of its thorn.