BOOM

a play written by jean tay a singaporean author

the book is the story of how an elderly woman and her property agent son, are struggling over the en block sale of their home, and a civil servant who is trying to find a corpse's family/relative. the language used is not English but singlish as explained in each note at the bottom of each page along with the actual meaning in English. finished in 30min

the story revolves around, Boon's family, and the story takes place during the modernization period of Singapore, probably in the 1960s or 1970s, in order to make space for HDB flats and other stuff, Boon's family entire block was being cleared as long as 80% of the vote supports moving house, en block will occur and they will all receive a huge sum of money enough to get a landed property and leave fairly comfortably, boon is trying to convince his mother to sign the contract but she is unwilling and faces pressure by the neighbours, goverment and son. due to memories of her husband who dissapeared over a long period of time and was not seen again, yet a fig tree planted by her husband caused her to be unwilling to move.

a civil servant named jeremiah ( was picturing jeremiah gottwald from code geass)... was tasked with the job to file a report on a cemetery if the land could be cleared and if the locals was willing. jeremiah was supposedly gifted with a third eye or something like that causing him to be able to speak to corpses, one particular corpse in particular, spoke, the grave being wrongly named, and thus the family could not be contacted and the corpse could not remember the family name only knowing that the one written on the grave was wrong. eventually jeremiah succeeded in refreshing the corpse's memories identifying himself as the father of boon. though he faced some problems with the director about this...  jeremiah identified it as the father remembered that he planted a fig tree.

jeremiah approached the mum and claimed that boon's father is dead, but his mum became enraged and cursed at jeremiah sending him out , because his only evidence is the fig tree, as boon got angry he cut down the fig tree, jeremiah who was talking to the corpse at the same time, the corpse felt pain as he was somehow connected to the fig tree, after boon's mum realised what boon did she threw statues at him but eventually accepted the truth after boon offered to take the tree along... and moved house, and for the corpse it finally ended with the corpse being cremated and turned into ashes...

go get the book