The forest next to me

Written December 2019

That was it. She pronounced precisely, perfectly what I had failed to for eighteen years. With that single word she captured its raw beauty. The sweet cooing of birds in symphony. The quiet rustling of leaves in the wind. The majestic army of trees. They gave my home a sweet, sylvan charm in this island crammed with buildings. She called my home a paradise.

Oh, paradise. She would not know that this magic spell would disappear in a few months.

Nor would I.

Like a cancer patient the forest was losing its hair far too quickly, chunk by chunk. What was initially a thick and thriving piece of nature was now reduced to rows of balding and some leafless wooden, skinny sticks. For the first time in the short eighteen years of my life I saw through the leaves those bits of blue sky in between the branches. Pallidly they swayed in the wind, trying to stand tall.

I remember the queasy, stomach-churning horror in me as I watched the squeaky cranes inch closer to the swathe of trees. Slowly they bent down, dug their claws into the ground, and yanked - the tree fell down, not with a single thud but with uncanny similarity to the beat of million breaking bones. I heard my heart slam to the ground. The death of a tree. I felt like reporting to the police.

I couldn't take my eyes off the scene - it was that kind of horrific, grotesque thing that you just need to take one last look at. The monotone growl of the machine. The indifferent, repetitive actions: claw, pull, throw. I watched them struggle with one particularly stubborn tree. First beaten to the ground, then it pounced back to life; then beaten again, but it forced itself to be vertical once more. What perseverance! Finally the machine gave up, easily dug a circle around the plant, tore open the piece of ground and flung the tree over. The breath in the tree died as it wobbled to stillness. Futile perseverance.

I jerked the window shut so I would not hear the sound of death. I pulled the curtain so I would not see. I forced myself to focus on the upcoming A Levels, A Levels, A LEVELS. The next few weeks I made sure I only came home past sunset, so everything was dark, so I could continue kidding myself the trees were still there.

Later, undesirably, the memories of a conversation with my friend flooded back to me.

"What can trees give you?"

"Fresh air?"

"That's right. And nobody cares about fresh air, until you lose it. Trees can't give you anything else. So of course in the coming years Singapore will continue to see her green spaces shrink."

And I thought of the forest near my home. I wondered when I would say goodbye to it. Hopefully after another ten years. When I was all old and matured and had become far too busy with my career; when I had grown to like my new HDB in some faraway part of Singapore. I wouldn't give a tree cutting a second thought.

Instead it turned out to be but a few months later.

Another moment in my secondary four classroom comes running back at me:

"How many of you are satisfied with the greenery in your residential area?"

I shot my hand up in the air proudly. "Bedok Reservoir!" I proclaimed when my teacher asked where I stayed.Then glancing around my class of forty, I was stunned to realize that only one other person raised her hand.​

I was special. I was privileged.

Therefore in a meritocratic society where every luxury ought to be earned, I have done nothing deserving to have a lush and economically inactive forest located next to my house. It was once there. Then we needed housing, so it must be removed. Logically. I don't deserve to live in some kind of Eden when eighty percent of other Singaporeans living in HDBs don't.

The signboard reads that the ongoing clearing of trees is for more HDB flats. Expectedly. Singapore is still aiming to squeeze in around one million more people towards 6.9 million. I wonder if we will ever have a cap on population growth. Shouldn't we? Mustn't we? What about the 11,000 scientists who reported on the climate emergency and warned that the world should aim for population control?

But it stimulates economic growth. In basic Economic theory one learns of the four factors of production: land, labour, capital and enterprise. And why do we need that? In Euston Quah's Singapore 2065, Minister for Manpower Josephine Teo sums up the need up this way: "without the growth, how possible or likely is it for people to achieve more for themselves and their families, or to reverse their fortunes? Without growth, how likely is it for a country to have resources to support its citizens in healthcare, education, to attain new highs in arts and sports?"

In another book, The Climate Casino by a Yale University Professor and Nobel Laureate William Nordhaus, he approves: "People will have substantially higher living standards in the [economic] growth world even after subtracting the damages from a changing climate." (But then again, his book was published in 2013.)

Redefining potential of the urban city. I think of the largely untapped potential of waste. No, I'm not endorsing people to waste more (don't forget that it's still excessively untapped, and most are still burnt away).

In the meantime, we need to conserve our verdant spaces, plant more trees, grow more community gardens and farms, wherever possible.

Trees. They are not simply beautiful adornments for our landscape - for that implies they should eventually be overruled by economic / monetary / practical considerations; that implies they have zero economic value. When they are in reality the cornerstone of the economy, the ones that clean and cool the air, that provide a source of food for all.

They are the epitome of the ethereal and the earthbound. Those too-good-to-be-true things that are actually true.

***

I was twenty when I saw the kingfisher descend On the barren carpark lot; Then flash by the reservoir like a lightning bolt Trying not to get caught.

I never knew their names for so long. But now as I walk, I hear a song. I don’t ignore, I think hurrah! Sunbird! Oriole! Javan mynah! White-bellied sea eagle, high as a rajah!

And as I realise the diversity of life around me I wonder if it’s too late When more of such diversity used to await me In that now-cleared forest I never opened the gate.