J.Panicker

I am a sicko, I know this. Because I came out of Vidura Bandara Rajapaksa’s only Singapore show, as part of his Paradise Gothic tour, with a very Singaporean complaint: he could have really gone for our jugular but held back.

His set ranged from the travails of being a corporate slave in a soul-sucking company culture to geopolitical tensions, delivered with a mechanical, detached air and loaded in poetic metaphor. At one point, he observed that tourists leave France with lower self-esteem, and wished Sri Lanka could inspire the same feeling in visitors someday. I understood this immediately. In fact, I had arrived hoping to leave with a little less self-esteem than I already had. I was looking forward to walking out with the remnants of my self-worth small enough to fit into my teeny purse. I was looking forward to getting ripped into for that local neuroticism, the many oddball laws and facts rife in this little red dot.

It was only midway through that Vidura even turned his attention to Singapore itself, to the oddness of sitting in a room full of people who had paid to watch him say that he hated Singaporeans. And honestly? I wanted more.

Having lived in Johor Bahru for medical studies, Vidura spoke about what he had in common with Malaysians, which gave the Singapore jokes extra bite, like someone who knew exactly how to hit that regional sibling-rivalry nerve. His description of Singapore as “what happens when you make a mall a city” was okay (I mean, we know this!), and the bit that followed can hurt in the way only an accurate joke does. He also poked at this habit of claiming culture a little too confidently, pointing out that laksa is not even as Singaporean as we like to think, and that so much of what we claim as ours is originally Malaysian. That’s undeniably true…

It was specific, uncomfortable, and delivered with enough comic precision to make the insult feel oddly intimate. My only gripe is that I wanted more of it. More needling. More mall-city slander. More cultural theft allegations, not just laksa! More of him dragging us through our national delusions until we emerged, humbled and way less smug.

So Vidura hates Singaporeans, and I regret to inform him that at least one of us had a wonderful time. Please come back and properly lower my self-esteem.