Grandma and Fireflies

I am back. The trip was quite a bad one really, with 95% exhaustive boredom and 5% wisdom. I remember lots of time spent on coach, traveling along those endless roads without direction signs, getting from one settlement (that is what the guide called them) to another with senseless name that I wouldn't even begin to understand. And the meals - both lunch and dinner - were just as plain and uninteresting as the guides from both ends of the causeway; I thought those professionals are supposed to be funny.

The shopping centres - even the most addicted shopaholic could find them a complete waste of time; why go there when we more or less see the same things here? I am completely baffled. The fruit and mango plantation tours were merely cash- milking vehicles thinly disguised as educational tours and talks fully armed with sales-people. Although, I retain some fond memories, not of Singaporean aunties grabbing for sweet honey mangos, but of the snow-haired grandma with toothless grin, who is presumably the plantation owner's old mother. She was there with us under the withering afternoon sun in matching black and white shirt and pants of flowery prints, eagerly packing the sold mangos into plastic bags. Then later she was at the entrance to the plantation as if overseeing and bathing in the joy of our visit. It struck me that the fruits of the plantation were not just the mangos, but our presence; the grandparents, parents with tottering babies or young children - as if we were in turn, her children and grandchildren. I thought she was the happiest grandma ever that day.

Our tour was to end with its highlight; the fireflies tour. At first, I was unmoved. The kampong smarties were giving the gullible, free-spending city dwellers a taste of their own medicine; the inventions of demand-supply concept, of money-spinning ventures purely for the greed of profit margins. I realised that I am like a bright-eyed kampong kid at heart. In other words, I am a sucker for the beauty of nature - and a willing one at that. But seriously, who wouldn't be moved by the elegant, mesmerizing, lit bugs powered by their mating instincts.

The bugs were suspended motionlessly in mid-air among the trees with the darkness of the swamp as their backdrop. Some colleagues commented the trees were like those with flickering light bulbs during Christmas. Close-up, the fireflies glowed magically brighter. One flew over my shoulders and landed almost impeccably on my right hand. For a moment, I thought I had caught a fairy dust. Those on the mini- cruise gasped in wonder. The firefly gave off a light a thousand times brighter than its tiny size could suggest as it lit up my face and heart. Amid the commotions it created, I could feel its crawling feet on my skin as gentle as feather and thought how vulnerable something as beautiful as that was. Deep down inside, I knew that its beauty was only momentary - the next morning, its life and energy would be gone forever. Perhaps, that is also part of its beauty. I made the decision to let it go, hoping it would continue in its search for a mate. I started to flap my hand but the charming bug just won't go, as if it had found its preferred mating place. Or the fairy dust had found its owner, giving him the blessing and strength to believe, and the determination to hold on - just like the firefly - in his search for love.

PS: True Love is just like the glow from a firefly- momentary and vulnerable, yet ever ready to enlighten our heart and mind. And of course, both are motivated by mating instinct.