"Rawa is the name of the island and its waters. Rawa is the wind. It is also the name he has lived with for seventy years. He is Rawa, in name and essence.
He's now returning to the land, to the waters. He is coming back to the winds after more than thirty years"
RAWA is the story of the Orang Seletar (an indegenous people of Singapore who lived in boats) that spans three generations from 1950s to 1980s. It is a story of how the Orang Seletar became refugees from their own land in the relentless pursuit of modernisation in Singapore in the sixties, and of how they were assimilated into the Malay community. It is also the story of the socio-political changes in the Singaporean Malay world during that period.
"Again, Rawa can't help, but smile. Everything has been thought of. Rawa concedes that it is a triumph of the rational, albeit an artificial attempt at improving the bond between man and man, and man and nature. Hassan's is a lucky generation. Still, he worries about nature being trampled upon and destroyed and of man being suspicious of man in the relentless pursuit pf all things material, with no regard at all for the essence."
