Smoke gets in your eyes by Engelbert Humperdinck
The year was 1958.
An eighteen-year-old boy from the poorest part of Chinatown, Singapore, was madly in love with a twenty-year-old girl from Eu Tong Sen Street, on the richer side of South Bridge Road. One cannot describe how love can grow and how love can develop.
The boy had lost his father when he was eighteen months old - his father being taken by the Japanese during the second world war under a purge campaign known as Sook Ching. His mother, although educated in the Chinese classics was unable to find employment other than to be a domestic servant.
The girl is an adopted daughter of a well-off hardware merchant operating from a shop-house next to the Majestic Theatre. How the two met was not important this Romeo-and-Juliett story.
Suffice it to say that the girl’s parents objected to the pair so strongly that the boy constantly wanted to end his life. He had tried to cross the busy South Bridge Road during the busiest hours but the buses and cars avoided him, at times just in time to brake right in front of him.
Then he discovered this song.
This song virtually saved his life.
He sang this song often to calm himself down.
That year 1968 was his Cambridge Examination Year, ‘O’ level exams, an important milestone for a young man’s career. For many like him, who could not afford to proceed on to the University, this would be his final year. He could not afford to fail.
This song, Smoke Gets In Your Eyes, had helped him passed his ‘O’ level examination, probably not with the best results but nonetheless he passed and he became a Primary School Teacher, enrolling himself at the Teachers College at Paterson Road, the next year.
Smoke gets in your eyes
Engelbert Humperdinck
They ask me how I knew
My true love was true
I of course reply
Something inside
Cannot be denied
They said some day you’ll find
All who love are blind
When your heart’s on fire
You must realize
Smoke gets in your eyes
So I chaffed them
And I gayly laughed
To think they could doubt
To think they could doubt my love
But today
My love has flown away
I am without my love
Now laughing friends deride
Tears I cannot hide
So I smile and say
When a lovely flame dies
Smoke gets in your eyes
But today my love has flown away
I am without
I’m without my love
And now laughing friends deride
Tears I cannot hide
So I smile and say
When a lovely flame dies
Smoke gets in your eyes
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This version of the song rendered by Engelbert Humperdinck was one of my favorites songs way back in the seventies. I remember well that I did an imitation of this rendition during a Karaoke session at the annual New Year function of the practice Lai Pang Fee and Simon Lim, Chartered Surveyors in 1975.
At that time one of the workers was falling out of love for the first time and I had him in mind when I sang the best I could. He was in tears after my rendition and I hugged him and reassured him that everything would be fine from then on. He has turned out to be a famous person in the property field in Singapore.
He felt relieved and I felt good having done something positive in his life.
For those who are interested in the history of this song, check the following website:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smoke_Gets_in_Your_Eyes
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smoke_Gets_in_Your_Eyes