Recently, a news article hit the papers. An immigrant family, new to Singapore, was complaining about the smells coming from their Indian neighbour. You see, the Indian family was cooking curry on a regular basis and the immigrant family (mainland Chinese) found the aroma objectionable.

The Indian family would close all doors and windows before cooking their curry but it appears that wasn’t enough. So much so that the Chinese family took the Indian family to a mediation centre. The ruling was that the Indian family could only cook curry when they were sure the Chinese family wasn’t at home. (Insert eyeroll here.) You can read the article here.

In retaliation, some Singaporeans organised Cook and Share a Pot of Curry day last Sunday (21 August) (it’s on Facebook somewhere) to show that curry is part of the Singaporean national cuisine and that it should be encouraged, not discouraged.

Feeling warm and fuzzy yet? Not so fast.

Five years ago, there weren’t as many mainland Chinese in Singapore. The city-state was thriving with a large white-skinned expat community. The banks were living high off the hog (still are, but there were more bank employees around then) and there were Europeans everywhere. In this environment, J and I went apartment rental hunting. And almost the first question we were asked (during our initial telephone enquiries) was whether we were Indians or if one of us was married to an Indian. Remember that the rental agencies we were talking to were run by Singaporeans.

When we went to visit apartments, the landlord (or his/her agent) would ask what kind of food we cooked. “Er, mostly Western,” was my reply. “No curries?” they’d persist. I’d shake my head. With my big Slavic husband by my side, it was a lie they easily accepted. The landlords we met, and their agents, were all Singaporean Chinese.

At one complex we visited, we were told quite proudly by the agent that there were “no Indians” living in the block.

By now, J and I were completely stumped. “What’s wrong with Indians?” we asked.

“Their food is very smelly,” was the reply. “We don’t like renting to Indians.”

Every single one of these comments came from Singaporean Chinese. It seems to be a well-known fact that the moment an agent gets an Indian family looking to rent a place, they get shunted to the less salubrious properties with less discriminating landlords. NIMBY* for curry.

Yeah sure, mainland Chinese are bigoted. They make a big show of belonging to an older culture and thus are “superior” to everyone else. They have paler skins than the south-east Asian Chinese and make a big deal out of that as well. (Malaysian Chinese we’ve met have a particular antipathy towards mainland Chinese, calling them arrogant peasants.) Mainlanders also have singularly undeveloped senses of humour. (We know, we’ve worked with a few of them.)

BUT…don’t blame them for an already existing problem. Singaporean Chinese were discriminating against Indians and complaining about the smell of their food long before one million mainlanders flooded the country. But I do applaud them for a neat sleight of hand. Now none of this is their fault At All. Well played, Singaporean Chinese. Well played.

(*) NIMBY = Not In My Back Yard

POSTSCRIPT: J reminds me that we also had to confirm that we weren’t mainland Chinese when we were apartment hunting. You see, the Indians may stink out the place (snort), but those same agents told us that mainlanders trash apartments. If you can see a bigger problem looming beneath this little feel-good band-aid, you’d be right.