The Tamilian, the Punjabi and the Muslim - An evening at a Makan place

Today's post will be slightly different, an account of three very different personalities I met today. A Tamilian, a Punjabi and a Muslim all living in Singapore.

Story of the Tamilian - An Odd job man living here for the last 40 years, who on probing knew all about the Xingyi (Inner Strength) martial arts amongst many others. He even gave us a brief overview and demonstrations on it; as one of my friends prepared to take on a Chinese fellow in some spar-turned-fight-turned-dead or alive battle thanks to some great flakyness. The man when he approached us, I thought he was some drug peddler coming to meet one of my notorious friends, but turns out he was just another odd job man who had probably the most planned time-table I have ever heard, where even the exact timing of his 5 hours daily chilling at the coffee shop was scheduled.

Xingyi : Inner Strength???

His insights on how 'China-boys' don't have any balls to fight alone, and would be kicked by any Indian brawn were rather offensive but none the less interesting to note. He was also of the belief that the reason he lost his job, was because his Chinese employers had plotted against him by alleging that he was late often for his job (which was alarming as even his coffee and walk time seemed to be so strictly scheduled everyday). Just when I was beginning to appreciate the lack of racism amongst the Singaporeans; his interesting insights were stopped when our next feature arrived. The Punjabi...

Dharmendra : Trend setter for Punjabis

Story of the Punjabi - 'Claims' to be Dharmendra's (that's right the Bollywood star) cousin and was a Police Officer here for the last 35 years. Further revealed, that he has a new girlfriend every month; and guess what he has two grown kids with a living wife. This liberalism, I thought was some sort of similarity and proof of his lineage to Dharmendra - who incidentally has two wives and even converted to Islam to make it possible. But as it turns out, as learnt from a trusted Punjabi Singaporean source, this is a very acceptable trend amongst most middle-aged Punjabis here; Gosh, never knew being a Punjabi had perks like these... since I was unfortunate enough not to be born as one I think its time I found a Punjabi girl so I could atleast try and become one now ;) .

Story of the Muslim - Save the best for last - By far the most interesting one; Originally from the capital of India, came here a few years back - now working here after having studied in Singapore's finest 'Temasek Polytechnic' - with an accent that even I could not contain my laughter(p.s. - I have quite an Indian accent) - 'teddy bear (said rhyming with dear)'. His allegiance to a certain Dawood Ibrahim (for the ignorant, he is India's most wanted and currently in Karachi), his family relations with a senior Muslim politician, a great gun collection back home and being from one of my favorite cities; all these things made him one of the people I would have liked to spend time with listening to on a free Wednesday evening (i.e a person full of crap).

Dawood Ibrahim : The Great Allegiance

Then he began to tell great tales of his valour, with some what seemed like justifications on his not so big size : "What is the point of wasting time in the Gym, when you can have a gun instead..?". Haa haa, that would be the best way to have justified such a thing; why didn't I think of that. darn!

Then came a very interesting story,
"We were all at my cousin's marriage last year, and someone from the crowd came and bit me; That pissed me off, so I just threw a punch in the crowd" Huh! ok...

"I think I punched the wrong person, so that person punched me back and 12 of my cousins drew out their pistols and rifles, and the other guys party drew it out as well,"

and when it already wasn't weird enough he said " this was all happening at the mandap(altar) during the ceremony, while I was rolling with laughter, because of what I had caused.". WHAT!!! wow, if some lay man heard this story he would think a usual Muslim family back in India would be pretty much like this.

Then came his supposed great taunts/jokes (don't know what else to call them :S), "My religion is at war, and with my people we can make any place a war zone, if we want to " haa haa...???

"I talk not with my fist, but with my bullets." - James Bond, aren't we?

Considering he is about 23, and you need to be atleast 25(with a government job) to get a gun; I pretty much would assume he was referring to his family arms arsenal of illegal guns.

Turns out this dude, had also got a bunch of Smugglers to this place, and had even introduced them to one of my friends sometime back, as they wanted to invest here. Thank God, my friend had the brains to back off, but I believe that those guys did manage to invest here and probably made good returns.

What people don't realise is that, such smugglers use this kind of money to further fund attacks and terrorist activities. It is proved that terrorists are using real-estate and commodities markets in Asia even in places like Mumbai to further raise money. It is a serious matter, but our friend here doesn't need to care, does he?

Wow, such people get work visas here, and who said Singapore is not diverse; I no longer think so especially after seeing such cases lol....

Moral of the stories : Wherever Indians go, they are bound to take with them diversity (along with absolute freakiness ofcourse).