Our village, Kampong Potong Pasir, located between Macpherson at Third Mile and Braddell Road, off Upper Serangoon Road, had houses made of wood, with attap, corrugated zinc or asbestos roofs. We were separated from Toa Payoh by the Kallang River, a huge swampy area which had recently been reclaimed. The word “payoh” comes from “paya”, the Malay word for swamp, whereas “toa” is Hokkien for big. Thus, this dual-language term means “Big Swamp”. Many hills around the island were slowly being eroded, as sand and gravel were needed to fill up the swamps. The name of my own village meant “Cut Sand” in Malay, as the former hills in our area were cut down to be used for land reclamation. The quarries that resulted soon became ponds, fed by the Kallang River and the monsoon rains. The Teochew name for my village, Swa Ti, reflected this. Eventually, the ponds were utilised as fish farms, something that Kampong Potong Pasir was known for, besides its floods.
Except for the main roads leading into town, and those in town, most of the village roads were mud tracks, called lorongs in Malay, unpaved, and filled with gaping potholes. During the heavy rainy seasons, village roads became slippery rivers of mud, treacherous to navigate, comical only when the consequences were not serious. Villagers, particularly those wearing rubber-soled slippers, slid and pirouetted, letting fly whatever they were holding, then crashed to the ground, and the contents of fruits, vegetables and personal effects from boxes, baskets or handbags were flung into the air and then plopped with a resounding sound into the squelchy mud, which instantly coated them like icing. The air invariably turned blue. Sturdier char kiak or wooden clogs became the safer option. “Char” was the Hokkien word for “wood”. In Malay, clogs were called terompah.
Our village char kiak maker, with his stacks of bright, colourful clogs of varying sizes for children and adults, had good business during the rainy seasons. I loved the smell of Ah Liang’s cottage factory when he was shaving the block of wood into inch-high clogs. His small premises opened on one side into the main lorong, though they were boarded up at night. He would be dressed in loose shorts and white singlet as he bent over the shaving block, a Good Morning towel rolled and tied across his brow to catch perspiration. As he moved, his muscles rippled along his arms, sweat dripping down his chest, staining his singlet darkly. I was 15, and doubtless, the hormones were raging in me. I was decidedly simple, having had no instruction on sexual development. It was years before the advent of the Internet, so information was not easy to come by. When I started menstruating at the age of 12, my mother, Mak, simply gave me a long strip of cloth and belt and showed me how to use it, rewash it and use it again. She did not know anything about sanitary towels then! I was an ulu kid. The word also referred to backward people!
But it was not only Ah Liang’s physique which was drawing my attention. I truly loved the scent of fresh-cut logs which rose into the air as curls of wood chippings flew merrily down onto the cement floor. The sawdust and chippings, like those from sawmills along the Kallang River at nearby Whampoa, were sold to the ice factory, to insulate the huge blocks of ice when they were being transported around in our tropical heat.
Kampong Potong Pasir was less than half a mile away from Hoo Ah Kay’s historic mansion, which was built in 1840, but was acquired by the government in 1964. Sadly, the magnificent house was demolished to create the Kallang Basin housing and industrial project and new roads. Mr Hoo Ah Kay, popularly known as Mr Whampoa, after the anglicised name of his village in China, was the first Chinese to be a member of the Legislative Council here and was also the first businessman to import ice into Singapore from America in 1854. He had the first ice factory in our country, near Coleman Bridge at Boat Quay. He was reputed to entertain high-ranking British officers in his mansion. The extensive grounds of his home were famous for their rockeries, aquariums, bonsai, flowers, plants, well-manicured lawns and topiaries. There was even a mini-zoo, with bears and an aviary with magnificent peacocks. It was said that people visited him to see the resplendent blooms of the water lily, though some called it a lotus, Victoria Regia, which was a gift from the Regent of Siam. During Chinese New Year, Mr Whampoa opened his gardens to the locals and even arranged fairground rides, like the merry-go-round. After his death, Mr Seah Liang Seah, who became the second Chinese to be a member of the Legislative Council, purchased the former’s old residence and changed it from Whampoa House to Bendemeer House. The new road that continued from Upper Serangoon Road just after Potong Pasir towards Lavender Street was thus named Bendemeer Road.
Kampong children, usually too poor to buy store-bought games, were very creative and could invent games out of very little. We made catapults out of twigs and vines, kites out of old newspapers, and Tapak Gajah or Elephant Hoof game with halved coconut shells or empty condensed milk cans. We competed with marbles, hantam bola (ball-hitting), kuti-kuti, kite-flying, spider-fights, gasing (top-spinning) and paper boats. We also devised a barefoot game, to see how far each could slide and surf along the slippery mud trail without losing one’s footing as others cheered with raucous laughter. Despite our deprivations, there were often sounds of joy that prevailed in the villages. There was a certain carefree je ne sais quoi spirit. This quality of lightness was not because villagers were simpletons but because we were not obsessed with accruing material things.
In general, it was the boys who enjoyed the robust mud-sliding game, especially since the girls were not keen on being splattered with mud. But I was a tomboy and wanted to join the boys, as they seemed to have a lot more fun. I felt that there were too many limitations for girls. At 15, I had become a gawky, awkward teenager, having lost all my baby fat, my hair shorn short. My chest was so flat, the boys and girls in the village called it an airport, so level that it was suitable for a runway! As I said, kampong children were very inventive. My eyesight was poor due to growing up reading by candlelight, so I had to wear cheap spectacles that were thick and chunky. As I grew in height, I also withdrew into my shell, losing my self-confidence, except when I was in the village. My father, whom we addressed as Ah Tetia, had scolded me many times for being dark, ugly and useless, a waste of rice. He kept comparing me to my cousin Mary who was the same age as me but as white as Hazeline Snow, a popular face cream. I wondered if my father understood the impact of his words. I wasn’t great academically though I was good in English, but I was fairly good at sports. I loved writing compositions, became a runner in school and played netball and badminton. As the latter activities were done outdoors, I got darker still, earning Ah Tetia’s wrath more than ever. I wasn’t ever going to please him, so I went ahead to play with the village kids and joined their boyish games.
“Aiyyoh, Ah Phine uh,” the boys lamented in Malay, our village lingua franca. “You’re a girl! How can you play lah!”
“Beri dia main. Let her join in,” Pak Osman, once our village elder, now leading a less active life, said. “Things are changing in the world. Girls can do what they were not allowed to do before…”
“Baik Datok, okay Grandfather,” the children conceded.
As always, my feet were bare. Very few village children wore shoes. One, because we loved the freedom of not wearing shoes. Two, because many of us could not afford to buy them. But this lack of restriction on growing feet meant that our feet were healthy and expanded naturally. This was another of my father’s grouses.
“You have such ugly feet! Too big! Too big!” he moaned, as if I had some kind of disfigurement. “Men like women with dainty feet. Who would want to marry you huh?”
If he could, he’d probably bind my feet as they did in ancient China! As far as he was concerned, I was a lost case. Besides being big, my feet were made worse by the fact that they were like a chimpanzee’s. My toes had good grip! I could hold a pencil with them, and climb trees with agility. My toes could cling to tree branches and trunks. I moved about like a monkey, plucking cherries and rambutans and even some coconuts. Alas, climbing trees was not an attribute for a good marriage! How my father despaired!
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sp; Still, I had to find things about myself to like.
I knew I could excel at the mud-sliding game. I was wearing the home-made cotton dress and petticoat that my mother, whom we addressed as Mak, had sewn on her Singer sewing machine. I wasn’t permitted to wear shorts or trousers, as my father claimed they drew attention to the pubic area.
“Tak seronoh sekali!” he would say. “No finesse!”
I took position at the patch of wet mud, with rivulets of water streaming down it. When one of the boys, Gurudev Singh, shouted Ready, Steady, Go! in English, a phrase which non-English speakers had adopted, though pronounced colloquially, I launched forward down the slippery trail in my bare feet, my arms held aloft at shoulder level to balance myself. I was zipping along very well, alternating between using the flats of my feet and their instep. But the thought came into my head that I was doing very well. The thought distracted me and my feet turned incorrectly and I whooshed too fast and flew into the air, skirt and petticoat blown out like a parachute, spectacles flung asunder, till my face kissed the wet ground.
The boys laughed, slapping their thighs. I had to pick myself and my soiled glasses up, face and body totally smeared with mud, feeling rather bruised, not just my body but my ego as well. I cleaned my spectacles with the hem of my dress and was mortified with shame. I wasn’t as good in sports as I had believed, and was glad when attention shifted from me to Zul as he took his turn. I hoped the boys had not seen my home-sewn cotton knickers! I swore to myself that one day I would earn enough to buy myself a pair of knickers from Metro, a department store in High Street where ordinary locals went, unlike Robinsons at Raffles Place, which was frequented by rich locals, the British and foreigners.
“Aku menang! Aku menang! I win! I win!” Zul yelled with pride.
Zul was a charming Malay boy and was my best friend Fatima’s youngest brother who had recently turned 12, the same age as their elder brother, Abu, had been in 1955. Now Abu was a handsome 23-year-old working for the Public Works Department (PWD) as a labourer because he, like Fatima, didn’t have any education. He had been such an orator and had manifested great potential to be a leader. Sadly, his wings were clipped before he could fly just because his parents couldn’t afford to send him to school. Now their younger brother Zul exhibited similar traits of leadership. The big difference was that Zul had the opportunity to go to school.
Since he became Prime Minister, Mr Lee Kuan Yew was making education a priority for everyone, including girls, as he saw that education was “an avenue out of poverty”. It was a simple yet life-changing statement and policy. No one would remain uneducated anymore. I nearly became one of those, had my mother not fought with my father, to enable me to go to school. Now schools were sprouting like dragon-teeth, and education was put within reach of all kampong children. Education gave us a precious key to knowledge and opportunities, which we did not have before. But people like Abu, Fatima and our dear, departed friend, Parvathi, had missed the boat. I got upset when people called my kampong friends stupid because they could not speak English and were not learnt. They might be ignorant but they had never been stupid. They simply lacked opportunities and choices.
“Ah Phine, Ah Phine,” Abu comforted me. He addressed me as everyone did in the village. They, like my family and the uneducated neighbours, found a three-syllable English name like Josephine, given to me by the English priest who converted us, hard to pronounce. “It’s okay. Intelligence is not just about reading the alphabet. Once I have accumulated enough, I will start a company, engage my own labourers and supply casual labour to small construction companies.”
I also prayed that Abu would be able to realise his dream.
I had hoped to get into our communal bathroom to have a quick wash before my parents saw the state I was in. The bilek mandi or bathroom had no roof and was open to the tops of trees and the sky. Cheeky boys always climbed the trees when a pretty girl bathed. But I was in no danger. The makchiks or old ladies would prod the boys down with long poles that had a hook at one end, which was used for dislodging soft fruits from trees. Wooden planks surrounded our deep well, laid with bricks at its mouth, and the floor was cement. But it was not my lucky day. The bathroom was occupied. Also, my father, Ah Tetia, was home early from work. Far too early. I didn’t know it then but was informed later that he was told to retire from the British company, William Jacks. Independence exacted a price. Many British companies were cutting back or closing down, so, many of our workers were made jobless, exacerbating our already bursting pool of unemployed people. Several people in our village were affected, and now so were we. Ah Tetia was not in a good mood. He was sitting on the threshold of our house and saw me before I had a chance to clean up.
“Now what have you done?” he bellowed. “Playing some stupid games with the boys again? You are 15! Can’t you act like a lady? Who would want to marry you?”
My father could go from being tender and loving into red-hot rage in minutes. On weekends when he would wake up early to cook Teochew moey or porridge for breakfast to accompany the pork rissoles his mother gave him for our family, he would tickle the soles of my feet to wake me up to eat the rice porridge. When he laughed, his face would light up with sheer joy. But unexpected enforced retirement as a bill collector before he was 55 caused him to worry about finances. He was waiting for me to reach 17 so he could marry me off. He was concerned that if nobody wanted me, I would remain his liability. Over the years, he had continually hammered into my head that I was dark, ugly and worthless. With horror, I realised that the poison had seeped into my veins and I saw myself as dark, ugly and worthless.
Kampong houses were mostly made of wood, with nipah palm thatched roofs, called attap, though some had corrugated zinc roofs. The attap, layered out in sheaves, lifted with the breeze to cool the house down, but not so the zinc roof, which became like an oven lid to trap the heat in the house, making it unbearable in the hot season. Fortunately for my family, only the kitchen part was zinc-roofed. We were grateful for small mercies.
Kampong life was largely subject to the weather. If it did not rain, our well would run dry. If it rained too much, our homes would get flooded. Drainage was a huge problem in the country, causing regular floods elsewhere besides our own village. The rivers and major canals would overflow, concealing the edge of the road and canals, so unsuspecting vehicles would drive headlong into the canals, sailing past like submerged boats, desperate passengers shouting and waving from wound-down windows to attract help. The Bukit Timah Canal, which ran from Upper Bukit Timah into the Rochor Canal, was one of the worst-hit canals in the country at such times. Besides this problem was that of filth. Utter filth. Our monsoon drains were open sewers, and our rivers and lakes were cesspools of pollution, as our population of nearly a million people emptied our human and industrial wastes into them.
I was one of the guilty parties.
We, in Kampong Potong Pasir, had acquired electricity in our houses only in 1965, shortly after our country had gained independence. This was supplied by a village generator. From our vantage point, it was mind-boggling to think of astronauts and cosmonauts going into space, when we had not even acquired basic necessities. Still, we were affected by the buzz of the outer-space competition and greedily savoured the black-and-white newsreel on our newly-minted Setron TV. At least we had one of our own in our house now after Ah Tetia, in one of his rare whimsical moments, had splurged his Christmas bonus from William Jacks on a TV set the previous year to watch the Southeast Asian Peninsula (SEAP) Games. We no longer had to risk life and limb to jostle with the kampong neighbours, to stand on tiptoe or on up-turned buckets and kerosene tins to peer over heads to watch the TV in the open-concept village kopitiam. There had been occasions when the wall of people, pressed against each other, lost their balance and collapsed on top of one another, to the consternation of the coffee-shop owner.
Having a TV at home was progress. Of course, we shared it with our less fortunate neighbours. Instead of congreg
ating outdoors after work to chat, tell stories and sing, as we did before, we now gathered indoors to discuss the latest episode of Sea Hunt, Z Cars, Bonanza and Peyton Place. Mak laughed at the antics of the Teochew comedians Wang Sha and Ye Feng. Our home became a mini-cinema auditorium, with neighbours bearing gifts of epok-epok and kachang putih. The Radio Television Singapore, or RTS, telecast commenced at 6pm in the evening, with the national flag waving in the breeze as the national anthem played. Locally, instead of using the word “anthem”, the villagers just referred to it as “Majulah”.
“Hurry up!” people would yell enthusiastically. “Majulah is on already!”
Our neighbours sat on the cement floor or on empty wooden fruit crates, whilst our family sat on our beds. Everyone cheered as the four presenters in their cultural costumes appeared on the screen, greeting everyone with Good Evening and welcome in the four official languages. There was only one channel.
PAP had been fulfilling its 1959 rally promises. First, it filled the potholes in the kampong road, though it was still not tarred. This meant that when the monsoon rain came, it would dislodge the packed sand and create new potholes. Secondly, PAP supplied us with electricity. But, we were still waiting eagerly for taps to be installed in our attap houses and public bathrooms. And we were beside ourselves with joyous anticipation at the thought that we might get flush toilets in the very near future, so that we no longer had to tolerate the disgusting, horrid smelling jambans, with cockroaches, centipedes and rats running all around, below as well as in the cubicles of our communal wooden outhouses.
Goodbye My Kampong Page 2
