There is a smell of the evening in military camps, it’s the smell of cheap sports soap used by most of us in Singaporean Military National Service.
The sun is setting, and everyone’s tidying up their gear for the evening. Some started eating their dinners already but others went for the showers first. I’ll usually be walking around to check who’s going where and if there are specific things to follow up before the night starts. Sometimes, most times, there are night coordination sessions where we need to dive into deep details about how things were and things to improve for the next day.
While walking around, the storm drains fill with the smell of soap, from the showers going on. The smell of sweat from the afternoon goes away, pushed out by the cheap menthol type body soaps. It gets hot in camp, without aircon in the bunks, so most people use something with a cooling after effect.
Those who haven’t started on their showers might be washing things down. There’s a lot of cleaning going on basically, but the sunset pulls the dirt of the day away.
Sometimes I smell this around the older housing estates. Maybe the smell isn’t from the storm drains, even though I feel the hot shower water steaming through the trains a bit. But when I smell it, it brings me back to camp. I remember how it felt like being at such a common point with my friends. I remember being part of a whole, and yet I was the one walking around to observe something like this. But still, part of the group.
In the estate, I am part of the community too. I’m not distant from them, despite my hope to be unique and individual. Instead, I am part of the group, and I am there, in the housing estates.
I recall a short story from Michel Faber, where the homeless and missing stay together in a shelter, and the protagonist looks over the bunk beds and sees his reflection in the puddle of pee at the bottom of the floor. He waves at himself, but other hands stick out and wave in response.
We’re all in this together, in this mess of pee, or cheap body soap, in my experience.
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