In Continuum.

Karma Police

Karma police, arrest this man
He talks in maths
He buzzes like a fridge
He's like a detuned radio

We need Karma Police, we really do. We need people to reinforce justice in our everyday lives, and not just those block-headed police in their uniforms, with their legs raised high above the dashboard and munching on doughnuts all day long. Fine, that might have been a stereotypical view of the police force, but it's not like the police force in Singapore is that capable anyway. Sure, they deal with cases like clearing up dead bodies hanging from ropes at home or corpses that have been lying in their homes for two whole weeks. But most of the time, they roam around the neighborhood riding bicycles, or sit in the police post waiting for the time to tick by slower than the time it takes for you to travel six times around the country on foot. At least that was the impression I got when I visited the police post to report my missing army identity card. The man behind the counter took nearly forty five minutes to type out a report no longer than a single paragraph. That's efficiency of a world alien to me.

We need a police force, a police force that hunts down people who never broke the law - or managed to escape it - and yet, weren't the nicest people around. I can picture them now, blowing down the front door of the person's house with their shields and baton, surrounding a half naked man in his bed and reading our his charges. The man of course, is not going to admit to his 'crimes', so the leader is going to whack him a few times on the thighs until he stops crying and listen to his charges. His charges would include shouting vulgarities at the old man on the train because he stepped on his brand new designer shoes. Or the other time when he was not so faithful to his wife and got away with it. Forget about how the Karma Police are going to obtain these information, just imagine that they have the technology to do so. Shall we?

Karma police, arrest this girl
Her Hitler hairdo is
Making me feel ill
And we have crashed her party

There was a fat boy whom everybody called the Laughing Buddha back in the Secondary School days. Not exactly because he brings peace and joy to the people but because he was fat, and you can practically blindfold him with a fishing line. He looked like the life-sized replica of a Laughing Buddha, the kind people buy and put in their homes to bring good luck. But that is of course, far from what he does to the weaker students in my school. Walking down the corridor in his poisonous fume and fats, he'd purposely bump into anybody smaller than him - practically anybody - and then ask him to apologize for it. Most people obliged, while the ones that dared to defy the man, received a hail of fists and left to weep in the corner while the fat boy moves on to the next target. The amount of 'respect' he commands after a public showcase of power like that usually increases, and he feels happy about himself. Let's just call this boy, D.

He terrorized the school in his own pathetic way, especially when the school gangster was not around. He's more like his minion or something, the guy that goes down and dirty to collect the protection money, and never the one who does the killing. James was the true gangster back then, the guy who showed us his wounds after being stabbed by a screwdriver, not to mention the other time when he came back to school after a two weeks disappearance act with a baseball bat to whack a teacher. D however, never had such acts to his resume. He was the man to boast his power due to his size, but was never daring enough to do anything more than looking menacing and threaten weaker kids in school. If I am the head of the Karma Police, I am going to list him as the very first case. This is why.

This is what you get
This is what you get
This is what you get
When you mess with us

There was a time when our classes merged for Geography, and he had to be part of my class somehow. Before Mr. Edmund Goy came, he created quite an uproar in the corner of the class, and I got involved in the brawl somehow. So there was the big D in one corner and Benjamin in the other corner, facing off with one another. D has a problem other than his obesity: He has extremely bad breath. Anybody who sits in his vicinity is going to notice that as being evident. Their faces were inches apart, facing off with one another chest to chest - or, in D's case, chest to breasts. Then all of a sudden, Benjamin turned his face away from D's, pinching his own nose with his fingers and complaining just how bad D's breath was. That infuriated D, and grabbing an empty bottle from the table next to him, he swung it into Benjamin's face. That sparked off the brawl, and because I was nearby, I was somehow involved.

I think D fell onto to me at one point, and because of he tremendous weight and my feather-like mass relative to his, I was nearly bone crushed. I must have said something under my breath, and his fat ears must have caught my words in the wind. The next couple of seconds are still clear to me even till today, but I remember the bottle being swung into my face as well, sending my glasses flying into the air and then his fat body crushing my thighs repeatedly afterwards. I guess Benjamin wasn't an easy fight for him, since Ben himself was quite a weighty person as well. So he turned to the closest and weakest target at hand to vent his anger: Me.

Karma Police, I've given all I can
It's not enough
I've given all I can
But we're still on the payroll

If there was a bully in school that I hated the most, it has got to be D. I have no idea where he is now, or what he did with his life after Secondary School. But throughout his time there, he broke his legs a couple of times, and I heard that he ended up in some second grade school afterwards and was subsequently kicked out - for his stupidity or bad breath, who knows. Maybe both. There must be some powers at work here, because nature is not going to allow such a repulsive person to roam around freely. Sometimes, you just wish for something bad to happen to such people just for kicks, no matter how childish such a hope might be. The person who invented the idea of "Karma" was a hopeless school kid in school, being bullied by some big fat gangster-wannabe as well. So the next time he saw this fat bully tripping over a rock and breaking his teeth, he must have came up with the word.

It's a funny thing how that word must have derived from the minds of a bullied child of sorts, or somebody who simply wanted nature to avenge him. From a word used to describe the phrase "What goes around, comes around", it has now become a word of comfort...somehow. A friend of mine asked if I believe in karma once, and I wondered very long about that question. I guess in a way, it works the same as the 'miracles' they claim in religion. If something good happens, it is a miracle. If something bad happens, it is life. In contrast, if nothing happens to D, that's life, and it is supposed to be unfair. But if something bad does happen and you get a kick out of it, that's karma.

This is what you get
This is what you get
This is what you get
When you mess with us

I guess what I am trying is, I hope that you will be happy in your life, that you are finally going to settle down once and for all. I do not doubt that one day, it is going to happen to you. However, when it comes to the case between you and I, even your friends believe that karma is a funny thing, and it is going to burst your doors down one day and slap you right in the face. It is probably not going to happen, the way it happened to me. But somehow, in some ways, it is going to happen to you - something, anything. Because revenge is a funny thing, it is going to hit you when you least expect it. After all, nature is not going to allow such a repulsive person such as yourself to live your life as you dream of it to be. And no, I am not talking about D anymore, for he received his own set of karma. It is you, I am talking about. Yes, you. Just you wait, the Karma Police will get to you someday. They are just waiting for the perfect moment to break your heart all over again.

So the next time you step out from your front door and have a flock of bird simultaneously dump their load on your face, or if your shirt gets caught in between the folding doors of a bus as it is traveling away, don't blame the birds for doing their business out in the public, or blame the bus driver for his carelessness. Blame yourself for doing what you have done to others, because it's true that what goes around comes around. And when you do realize that the statement is true, I hope you see my face from the corner of your eyes, smiling and mocking at you.

And for a minute there,
I lost myself, I lost myself
And for a minute there,
I lost myself, I lost myself