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Teatime Time travel
Chatelayne
15 Apr 2002
I was in the MRT today when a Blast from the Past got in at CCK.
I did a double-take when I looked at the gal in her BPGHS school uniform. It could have been me ten years ago.
In ways I cannot quite pinpoint, there was something uncannily familiar about everything about her.
Her short unruly 'Dutch-lady' curls framed her face and was held in place with two black slides as mine had been when I was about her age. She even wore the same black bindhi that I always did and her plain studs completed my quintessential Sec 2 getup.
Her body was at that awkward stage between pre-teen and puberty when valleys shape and define unanticipated curves. She had, with almost the same clumsy fashion sense I had at that age, tried to unsuccessfully hide these changes with a loosely tucked shirt over the maroon skirt. The skirt not doubt, still subject to the conservative fashion sense of a doting mother, was a nerdish thirdway down her legs.
It would be a fashion season or two before she discovers and tries to adopt (quite unsuccessfully) subtle schoolgirl tricks of shorting it without arousing the suspicion of the discipline master, like folding the skirt band over and over or raising the hemline half an inch at a time..
She had a councillor pin on her collar and she carried a black sling bag which looked loaded with books and was devoid of any decorative trappings that adorn the typical secondary school bag.
I remember that sort of school bag was never terribly popular but it was something that I faithfully swore by in Lower Secondary.
They still sell that thing. Wow.
If the similarities were not uncanny enough, she had her nose firmly tucked inside a story book, (the Pearl, no less) and for the entire duration of the journey, was engrossed in it, oblivious to everyone and everything.
I felt an excitement build inside me together with the plethora of possibilities that bubbled in my head. If she was this similar to me in features, mannerisms and taste, I was almost sure her character would match mine as well.
Surely she would as I did, love Literature, enjoy History, abhor Geography, tolerate the Sciences, ace English, work hard at Tamil and somehow manage her way through Art and HomeEc.
She just had to be a writer as I was, and a talkative chatterbox who was loud in class and went stomping around in school, abiding by school rules with geekish abandon. Surely all the teachers knew her..
And perhaps those old enough to remember would see the similarities she shared with someone they taught 10 years ago...
My mind plunged in and out of such irreverent thoughts, rambling and wandering in a vein of reason built entirely on happy coincidences and a dubious premise, till my stop arrived.
I should know better than to indulge so. She was a total stranger who just happened to study at my alma mater, more likely to have less in common with me than my neighbour's cat.
Shaking off the day dreams, I exited the train marvelling at my own ability to get so carried away.
But as I exited, I couldn't help sneaking a last look at the little Blast from the Past. She was still reading. Engrossed in Kino and the Pearl. Blissfully unaware that she had been responsible for a very pleasant sensation of deja vu.
And a lovely little teatime time travel.
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