who’s afraid of the big black…. ah nek?

something happened recently, and left a huge impact on me.
it got me thinking of the invisible lines we draw in our society, the people we come into contact with, the friends we mix with, the people buy our kachang puteh from.

you see, several days ago while shopping at NTUC, i saw this mother chasing after her one/two year old daughter who was running amok. she was chasing her down the aisles, from the biscuits to the dairy products, from the dairy products to the meats. while that shouldn’t have been anything but odd, i’m pretty sure i heard the mum say this to her daughter.

“stop running if not later the ah-pu-neh come and take you away!”

for those of you who are unfamiliar with the term “ah-pu-nek” it is a term (perhaps derogatory) that singaporeans have come up with for our indian friends (i think we came up with this right?).

to my amazement, this lady was just repeating that line over and over again as if it were absolute truth! omigoodness! i couldnt help but think to myself what message we are sending to our younger generation! can you imagine a generation of youth brought up to think that the “ah-pu-neh” is bad? we give so much power to this “ah-pu-neh” construct that it even begins to scare us! what a friggin huge paradox!