Another ICS

The Indian Cultural Society, or ICS, is an integral part of many Singaporean Indian students’ lives. At various stages of one’s life, one might be totally involved in it, or totally condemn it. The ICS becomes an aggregate voice of Indians in the school, and how much support one gave it depended on how well the ICS reflected your idea of how Indians should be perceived.

There are many types of ICSes – some are the "high-cultured" ones that are known to exude a sense a professionalism and high class. Then there are the "uncouth types", which prefer to base programmes on the preference of a vocal few, and end up with the name “kuppai” (trash) or “tharuthalai” (hooligan?). Then there are the mass appeal types which hit the right note by appealing to a diverse range of tastes, and supported by the electorate (so to speak).

What to ICSes do? Contrary to popular belief, they are not all that useless. Although a major KPI might be to organise that Totally Wonderfully Extragavant ICS Show (TWEICSS), they do other social functions, like volunteering at old folks’ homes or raising funds for the disabled. ICSes, depending on their financial clout and the Tamil teachers’ networks, also organise inter-school competitions involving essay-writing, debating, singing, acting or dancing.

I used to gauge the strength of an ICS through its TWEICSS. A well-organised, enjoyable show went to show the talents of the Indians in the school, the ability of good leadership of the ICS to pull together the talents, and the standing of the ICS among its own members.

Through some fluke, when I was elected as the President of my JC’s ICS, the Executive Committee (Exco) used to go for other TWEICSSes and drool and crave to have our own. You see, during my days, the ICS was seen as a expressway to academic doom in my apparently high-performance JC. More time spent on ICS = less time for studies = fail common tests = fail A levels = die lor. Mind you, clubs like the Computer Club and Chess Club thrived. But not the ICS.

But we tried in our small ways to raise our profile, through performances at major assembly concerts, and by inviting a multi-racial mix of members. We participated in Tamil Debates (we were champions in '98). We also wanted to prove we were not woosies by also trying to participate in singing, acting and dance competitions. But the invitation letters, we learnt later, which had been addressed to “The Indian Cultural Society” had been withheld from us, and destroyed! Bloody hell. This resulted in we being unable to participate in anything, and other ICSes thinking that we were all too nerdy and up in the ivory towers studying to get into the Ivy League and not bothering about the Indian cultural scene.

However, things have changed. When I recently spoke to a member in the current ICS of my JC (class of 08!), I was heartened to know that they had a TWEICSS 3 weeks ago. That’s good… with new teachers comes new ways of doing things. The ICS has indeed come a long way.

We had also done up an ICS t-shirt during our year, an unprecedented first. The logo that was printed is the one that you see above, designed by our fabulous artist, Denise. We also put up a website - which still exists! What a flood of memories... as you would see, the language the website uses is like some testosterone-packed action-mama brotherhood of the Bedok 42nd parang-wielding battalion. Enjoy the website here.