Singapore is a no-nonsense coun­try. I know that because I lived there for three years. It has also been called a ‘fine’ country: you get a fine if you drop litter, jaywalk, bring in chewing gum, and a host of other, seemingly petty things.So what was everyone thinking in Singapore this past week as it hosted the Kim-Trump summit? I watched some of the scenes of Kim Jong-un’s first meeting with the Prime Minister of Singapore, Lee Hsien Loong. A lot of genuine smiles, handshakes and the definite sense of brotherhood and equality. It may take some time yet for the full implications of the later Kim-Trump summit to be clear, but it certainly got me thinking.

 

I was also thinking of a friend of mine, Pinocchio, that little wooden puppet who came to life. Pinoc­chio was a naughty little boy and, like other little boys, a bit hard to handle. And, as we all know, Pinocchio had a nose that would grow and grow when he told a lie. Pinocchio was Italian, but what if he lived in Wonderland, aka, no, not Singapore (although you are forgiven for thinking that this week), but Kathmandu…

 

Once upon a time, after a partic­ularly bad beating from his father, Pinocchio decided to run away from his village to Wonderland where he heard the streets were paved. Not with gold. Just paved. Sneaking onto the roof of a bus, Pinocchio encountered a group of older boys. Where are you heading and how old are you, they asked? Fifteen, replied Pinocchio, and his nose grew. So Pinocchio found his way into the company of youths who lived in Wonderland and showed him around. Pinocchio was impressed with the tall buildings and the fact that everyone looked like they were hurrying towards important busi­ness. And look at all these shiny cars and motorbikes—why, everyone must be rich! That night Pinocchio slept in a shop doorway in Thamel. Next morning he was shown how to approach those strange people known as ‘tourists’; who he took for that magical being, an ‘American’. Hungry, said Pinocchio to the ‘Amer­ican’. His nose grew, but just a little.

 

As time went on, Pinocchio won­dered how people did business in Wonderland when it seemed quite obvious that all parties had growing noses. How was anything achieved? How did contracts get drawn up and kept, given the number of large noses in the room? Wandering into a bank one day, Pinocchio noticed loans being handed out on the condition of being repaid. No one seemed to notice the large noses in the room. Later he stopped to listen to a politician, standing on a raised platform, making promises that made Pinocchio think that maybe he was not such a naughty boy after all. Perhaps at the time of speaking the nose was just a little larger than normal, thought Pinocchio, but two or three years down the road when the promise was still not fulfilled, he noticed the nose dominated the conversation. Pinocchio shopped where he saw shopkeepers with small noses, ate in restaurants run by small nosed people, and tried to be friends only with people who also had small noses.

 

But then, a strange thing hap­pened: Pinocchio became aware that his nose no longer grew as much. He noticed that people who came to the city from overseas (those ‘Amer­icans’) or from other parts of the country, now had noses bigger than his! Somehow they had become part of Wonderland and accepting of all Wonderland had to offer. They had forgotten what it was like not to have a long nose and were mistrusting of those who did not have noses similar to theirs. They had simply become Romans, while in Rome.