I COULDN'T agree more with Mr Koh Poh Tiong that kindness is indeed spontaneous and comes from within ("Kindness is part of our nature"; Tuesday).
A few days ago, I was on a bus in Bukit Timah Road on my way back home from work.
A woman seated to my left was talking in Mandarin for quite a while on her phone. A few stops after Balmoral Plaza, an Indian worker got on with a fairly heavy backpack. Though the seat next to the woman was empty, the worker chose not to sit, but kept standing.
From the corner of my eye, I could see the woman staring intently at him. She then took out a few pieces of tissue from her handbag and offered them to the worker, saying, "Please use these, you are perspiring so much".
At first, the man hesitated, saying, "no, no", but he later accepted the tissue and thanked the woman.
This was a spontaneous act of kindness completely transcending race, religion and language. It was a simple act of one inhabitant of Singapore reaching out to another.
No Gallup poll, or survey, or any other method of measurement can capture such acts of genuine kindness which probably occur all around us, but which we are too busy to take note of in the hurly-burly of daily life.
Long live Singapore and the spirit of kindness in all its inhabitants.
Raju M. Iyer
A few days ago, I was on a bus in Bukit Timah Road on my way back home from work.
A woman seated to my left was talking in Mandarin for quite a while on her phone. A few stops after Balmoral Plaza, an Indian worker got on with a fairly heavy backpack. Though the seat next to the woman was empty, the worker chose not to sit, but kept standing.
From the corner of my eye, I could see the woman staring intently at him. She then took out a few pieces of tissue from her handbag and offered them to the worker, saying, "Please use these, you are perspiring so much".
At first, the man hesitated, saying, "no, no", but he later accepted the tissue and thanked the woman.
This was a spontaneous act of kindness completely transcending race, religion and language. It was a simple act of one inhabitant of Singapore reaching out to another.
No Gallup poll, or survey, or any other method of measurement can capture such acts of genuine kindness which probably occur all around us, but which we are too busy to take note of in the hurly-burly of daily life.
Long live Singapore and the spirit of kindness in all its inhabitants.
Raju M. Iyer
