TR EMERITUS

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I am trying to understand this report. It is about what seems like a harmless taxi ride that went down south real fast.

Janelle arranged for a tada ride on her handphone. She was with her 9-year-old daughter. They wanted to go to her sister’s place, with gifts of cushions and bedding. Her sister just moved in.

The first gesture was amicable enough. The tada driver came out to offer assistance to help Janelle with the cushions and beddings. She declined because it was not heavy. From there, things turned unexpectedly ugly. “He started shouting at me, saying that I gave him the wrong address and wrong directions.” It went downhill from there, as Janelle recorded the heated outburst, with no provocation on her part.

The next issue with the Tada driver was her daughter. He claimed she was below 1.35m tall. It is thus illegal to have her as a passenger without a booster seat or child restraint. Janelle explained that her daughter is 1.37m tall. Above the height that required a booster seat.

Along the way, he continued to shout at her. These words cut deep. “You are Indian, you are stupid…You are Indian(n). I’m a Chinese… You are the very worst kind…” She felt he meant that Indians are the worst kind of customers. Janelle then replied back. “I am Singapore Eurasian, not Indian.”

At some point, he came down from the car, and was exhibiting threatening behaviour, demanding that she unload her things in the boot. All this while, she and her daughter kept recording, as evidence for their safety.

As an aside, one thing I discovered about open recording is that it has different effect on different people. It either causes the assailant to check himself/herself, as they become more self-conscious. No one wants their dirty linens to be aired in public. It is a face thingy.

Or, it aggravates and heats up the confrontation. It is perceived as a self-righteous act, and in retaliation, the perpetrator would up the ratchet and let it all out. Who doesn’t want their 7 minutes of fame, right?

Going back, Janelle contacted Tada, and has this to say: “Where I was tanner skin, or Indian, or otherwise, it’s unacceptable what he said - it was totally uncalled for, that he pulled out the race card.”

Lesson? Can we all get along?

Mm…it’s more complicated than that. It is a tribal thing, rather primitive in the way we judge people. A tribalistic mindset usually go for the lowest hanging fruit (like race, language and/or religion) to fire up that ire.

It is largely about how different you are from me. But, make no mistake, family feuds can be really ugly too. I once dealt with a case where the mother (deceased) had eleven children, the youngest is above 60. And they fought over their mother’s 3-room HDB flat for more than 4 years. They are all well to do. It’s not about the money. Go figure, right?

Alas, you can be a stranger or someone all too familiar, and sparks can fly at a triggering event. They often accumulate though, the little sparks that agitate. And when the perfect storm converges, the past suddenly becomes your fiery advocate. What went unnoticed in the past becomes a flint for the fire of hate and prejudice. Justice becomes vigilante-like, if not tribalistic, as we fan it up for maximum grudge effect.

At the risk of oversimplifying it, the science of hate is the study of how much we can’t let go. There is a Chinese saying, “ná de qǐ fàng de xià.” (What you pick up, you put down). Over the years or decades, we pick up a lot of things when engaging in different relationships. At times, the closest ones can be the most inflammatory, like a marriage that is beyond salvage.

You name it, slants, insults, mockery, dismissals, alienation, and being looked down at. We pick them up, compartmentalise them, until the faultlines are breached. Some of them fester within, and it takes a triggering event, however innocuous, to open up that Pandora’s box.

The incident that Janelle had with the tada driver may be set off by a lone lighted match thrown into a pool of kerosene of past animosity. Anger that boils over does not need to be directed at the person who directly caused it. There are collateral damage too.

Unresolved issues add up. Our past is the warehouse, where we secretly store all our grudges. And our ego, that fragile sense of self battled by the harsh realities of life, is the key that unlocks them.

So, it is not so much a case of our differences collide, and our similarities coalesce. But it seems more likely that how different you are from me does give one more reasons to reach out for the lowest hanging fruit, centered on skin colour and belief system to well up hatred against.

How I deal with that is to always check myself. I read about the struggles of people, regardless of race, language or religion, and seek to understand them. I am alive to the reality that there are toxic people out there. But I refuse to see them as they are. Their actions can be befuddling, frustrating, but I always give them the benefit of a doubt.

I try consciously not to see them as a pamphlet, one page, one-sided, and judge it there and then. I see them as a book, with stories to tell, that is, a narrative of broken humanity, earnestly finding acceptance and hope. Admittedly, there are some cases beyond me. We should just walk away or report to higher authorities because they threaten our safety.

But as a whole, I believe that if we should pause before reacting, even when we are caught unaware, and seek to understand the person behind the provocation. The lapses of time is your most effective cooling agent. Recall this scripture, a gentle response turns away wrath, but a harsh one stirs up anger.

Often, there is a story left unsaid, and the target of their ire goes much deeper than what is manifested. And the more we take the time to understand, even at that heat of the moment, the more we are able to let it go.

Michael Han

* The author was a Director at Han & Lu  Law Chambers and blogs on Facebook.

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