“I also didn’t know…” Mak said. “I thought we will always have the same neighbours. What will happen? At my age, it will not be easy to make new friends…”
My mother was voicing what many of our elderly villagers were worrying about. We knew that the impending move was for our own good. We would not be subjected to the vagaries of the weather and we wouldn’t have to fear our houses catching fire so easily. And we would have modern facilities. But how could all that take the place of our community and friendships which had been built up over so many decades?
In the same way that Abu and Fatima’s family were splitting from Singapore, our combined national airline, Malaysia Singapore Airlines (MSA) announced that they were separating. Malaysia felt that having their own airline “would engender national prestige”. Our Finance Minister Hon Sui Sen said the decision was due to “the divergent policies and objectives of the two governments.” MSA would cease to exist by 1973.
Change was upon us, sometimes without our bidding or acquiescence.
We were caught in a whirlpool of change. There were so many changes, so many new laws and prohibitions that we sometimes reeled from their impact. We didn’t know whether we were coming or going.
Then, in February, we heard of another change. A very major one this time. Former Deputy Prime Minister Toh Chin Chye, who was the current Minister for Science and Technology, passed the Metrication Act and set up the Metrication Board. He announced that the whole country would convert from the imperial system to the metric system by 1975.
“What?” Ah Gu said, flabbergasted. “No more inches and feet? Why can’t I say one gallon? How much is one litre? What’s this metre and kilometre, grammes and kilogrammes? Buay hiow lah! Don’t know lah!”
Traders would no longer use katis and tahils or pounds and ounces. No more yards or miles. This change was the most daunting for us.
“Please, please don’t be scared,” Mr Yap, Suhaimi and Ananda from the PA tried to reassure us. It was their job to explain the government policies and rulings to us. “It’s more easy once you get used to it. Instead of twelve inches to one foot, everything is in round numbers. One hundred centimetres equals one metre. One thousand metres equals one kilometre.”
Nenek Bongkok wailed, “Sudah lah! Forget it! I’m too old to pick up this crazy way of measuring. What’s wrong with the old way? We’ve been using it for years.”
Many of us felt the same way. Our world was becoming unfamiliar. The ground beneath our feet was shifting. When the British pulled out 15,000 of their troops from their bases at Changi, Seletar, Sembawang and Tengah, 17,000 locals were made jobless, some from our village.
My personal world was changing too. I was about to lose my best friend, Fatima. She and Parvathi had been my closest friends since we were kids. We lost Parvathi in 1964 when she refused to marry the widower her father tried to force her to marry. Fatima, in her euphoria of first love, did not notice my misery and sullenness. We were drifting apart even whilst we were still together. Of course, I was aware that we would one day grow up and have our own lives but I didn’t expect her to move out of the country. I felt with a sinking feeling in my heart that once that happened, we would not be able to keep in touch. She could not read or write, so letters were out of the question. Trying to communicate by telephone would be costly as the call would be a trunk call. Plus the fact that my family did not have a telephone at home meant we would have to use the public phone in the village. And we were not yet in the digital or Internet age, nor had personal mobile phones appeared as yet. In those conditions, she might as well have said she was moving to Timbuktu or the other end of the world.
“Ah Phine ah,” Fatima said with sheer joy a few days later, “I’m getting married before we leave. To the one I chose! How lucky is that? Who would think this was possible a few years back? Sulaiman wants us to be husband and wife before we get to KL.”
Try as I might, I could not drum up any enthusiasm. I was going to tell her that I had passed my nursing exams. I wanted to share my excitement about graduating as a full-fledged Assistant Nurse (Dental). I had longed to tell her that the two-band orange pips on the shoulder of my uniform would soon be exchanged for a solid colour. But my news suddenly felt insignificant next to hers, so I didn’t. No one attended my graduation in the end, but as I went up to receive my certificate, I thought of Mak and how her love and labour had resulted in this. I did tell her afterwards.
“Yes, I gave you a start,” Mak said. “But you did the hard work.”
For once, I did not share my innermost joy with my dearest friend, Fatima. I chastised myself later for not being exuberant about her happiness. The next time she came to share with me her wedding plans, I learnt how to disguise my own feelings and projected instead something I did not feel. I asked for details, as if I really cared. I was becoming an adult. Or was I turning into a hypocrite? Would she notice that the smile on my face did not reach my eyes? But she was so buoyed by happiness that no cloud could darken her mood. She invited me to attend her berinai ceremony together with her friends and female relatives. It was a joyous occasion, all the girls chatting merrily and teasing Fatima as her fingers and palms were being stained with henna in an intricate floral design. Yet all the time, my heart was heavy. I was losing my best friend.
“You must come to visit us in KL, Ah Phine,” she said.
I noted how she said the word, us. The sense of pride was reflected in her voice. Of possession. She no longer had to face a future alone. It was a small word but it was loaded with a huge cauldron of meaning.
Too soon, her wedding day arrived.
Outside her family’s house a tent had been set up with large sheets of woven straw mats on the sandy ground, where guests would sit for lunch. Lunch was going to be nasi minyak—basmati rice sautéed with ghee, then cooked in ground onions, garlic, ginger and raisins, with delicious steaks of moist mutton wedged in its midst. The food would be served on a giant platter placed on straw mats on the ground, and each platter was to be shared by four people. A pair of chairs had been dressed in shiny brocade and decorated with fresh bouquets of flowers, fragrant jasmine intertwined with bunga chempaka and orchids. This was the pelamin or dais, where the bride and groom would sit in regal splendour, as they enacted being a king and queen for the day, and where the bersanding or sitting-in ceremony would be held. Guests would approach the bridal couple to shower them with flowers and sprinkle yellow rice, to wish them good fortune and bless them with fertility.
“Mereka datang, mereka datang! They are here, they are here,” the young village children shouted excitedly.
All the villagers crowding round made space to create a path for the bridal couple and their entourage. The band of six kompang players started beating the Malay hand-held drums with their bare hands as they walked and recited verses from the Quran. The men were all dressed in traditional Malay attire made from satin, their sarongs made from songket or brocade, songkoks on their heads. The rhythmic drumming created a festive air and all the village children clapped to the beat. The kompang players were followed by a team of men carrying the slim trunk of the bunga mangga, which looked like palm trees, the palm leaves made out of bright tinsel that shimmered in the afternoon breeze. Later, when the drumming had stopped, these bunga mangga would be lowered and the village children were permitted to rush forward to pluck the faux-palm leaves. The respective relatives followed behind the bunga mangga carriers and finally the bride and groom. Both were dressed in matching light blue, Fatima’s favourite colour. Sulaiman was tall and his features were chiselled to fine proportions. They were a good match. Fatima’s face was made up, her lipstick a bright red. It was the one time that make-up was permitted for a village girl.
I could see how love had made her look more beautiful. It was not just due to the make-up. She practically glowed, her eyes shone. Being desired or loved must be a magical potion. Unbidden, I was caught by a feeling of envy. Would my face ever glow like that? Would I ever b
e loved or desired? I doubted it. Though my father has passed on a while ago, his words to me were still alive, their legacy weighing heavily and darkly in my psyche.
“You’re so black! You’re so ugly. Who would want to marry you?”
When Will the Good Apples Fall?
(1972)
PRIME Minister Lee Kuan Yew was sensitive to the country’s prevailing mood after the British pull-out. He rendered his New Year message in a much more rigorous and positive timbre. He projected an aura of confidence when he announced that the economy was growing and he was creating jobs for the 17,000 people who had been made jobless the previous year. His charisma could not be underestimated; he could pull the country through challenging times.
I did not share the country’s euphoria, inconsolable after Fatima left.
All her family’s household items and personal effects had been piled onto one lorry. Their possessions were meagre. I joined my mother and other kampong neighbours to bid the family goodbye. I had known them my entire life. Mak had made several packets of nasi lemak wrapped in banana leaves for their long journey up-country. She cooked for people not just to provide sustenance and a good meal but to spread her joy and express her love. Fortunately, I inherited this trait of hers. I was grateful that her legacy to me was much more inspiring and enabling than my father’s.
Fatima’s mother kept wiping her tears with the ends of her veil. The sight of her silent weeping made us want to weep too. We were so wrought with strong emotion that we could hardly speak, and we didn’t say the words that probably should have been said. Isn’t it always that way? My two elder brothers came back from their marital homes to say goodbye. They pumped the hands of Fatima’s father and brothers.
Because the chances of staying in touch were so remote, their departure felt more final. Of course, we were given their new address but how were we to communicate? Fatima and I hugged each other for a while. She had been uplifted by her wedding, but now that the end was near, she too was overwhelmed by our pending separation. I felt her heart thud under her kebaya. I felt her warm palms, now sweaty with sorrow as we hung on to each other for those last few minutes, her beautiful eyes watery. I tried to savour the moment and the sense of her touch, the smell of her hair, branding them into my memory. Then I placed the gold hooped earrings that I had once given to Parvathi but which she had returned to my mother the night before she died, into Fatima’s hand, and closed her fingers around them.
“But I have nothing for you,” she said, her voice breaking.
“You’ve given me all I needed all these years,” I said. “You’ll always be my special friend.”
The family eventually clambered onto the back of the lorry.
We shouted in one voice, “Selamat tinggal, selamat jalan! Goodbye! Safe travel!”
Abu and Zul shouted back in hoarse voices. The engine started. The wheels of the lorry churned up a flurry of dust. Everything seemed to move in slow motion, as if time was suspended. Then the vehicle began to roll out of the village, bearing the people we loved away from us. The family waved frantically. We waved back, fighting back tears, and continued waving till the lorry turned a corner and went out of sight. And out of our lives.
I kept passing Fatima’s family home, expecting to see her or run into her, so that the nightmare of her leaving would be just a bad dream. But when I saw the empty house, devoid of her presence and the sound of her laughter, reality hit me. She was gone from my life. Just as Parvathi had gone. As the fate of the village had already been sealed, there were not going to be new people moving into the house. It stood empty.
Those people who had the finances and opportunity to relocate were also moving out instead of waiting for the government to re-house them. I noticed that the Chinese owners of the big fish ponds which characterised Kampong Potong Pasir also looked as if they were moving out. The sight of the fishermen on their small sampans hauling out the nets of fish was becoming less and less frequent. What kind of occupation could fishermen have when they stopped fishing? How could they fish from the 10th storey of an HDB block?
Those of us who remained were hoping for some kind of compensation from the government. Without compensation and financial assistance, we would not be able to afford to buy ourselves a new home. We were told that a two-room HDB flat cost about $3,000 which would not be sufficient for us, as it meant there was only one bedroom and one living room. We needed at least two bedrooms, which HDB classed as a three-room flat. The living room was considered a room. It would cost up to $6,000, a sum we did not possess. Though it started as a trickle, the exodus slowly left more and more houses vacant, empty houses surfacing on the landscape of our village like gaping wounds.
The atmosphere in the kampong was altered. A pall of sorrow seemed to hang over us. We were more tense, less conversational as we worried about our future.
“Aiyyoh! I wanted to go to the Led Zeppelin concert but it has been cancelled,” Karim complained in February. “Jimmy Page and his group refused to cut their long hair. Why should they cut off their trademark tresses just to perform here? But all this nonsense is making our music industry suffer. When is all this going to stop?”
Certainly not in the near future. In March, the Bee Gees were to perform at the National Theatre. On their first night, they were forced to wear hair nets! After the first show, they got back on the plane.
I had other concerns on my mind. I couldn’t articulate my feelings to anyone about the loss of a friend who had been so dear to me. This emotion was combined with my feeling of being incapable of being loved, the curse of my father’s words. I seized on the song sung by the Australian group, The Seekers, to channel my angst. The sentiment in the chorus of their 1967 song, ‘When will the Good Apples Fall?’ allowed me to say aloud what I could not speak about directly. No way did I have lead singer Judith Durham’s clear soprano voice or even a modicum of her talent, but I continuously wrung out the lyrics in tortured tones:
“Oh, when will the good apples fall on my side of the fence?
When will I taste the sweet fruits of life?
When will the sun smile for me, through great cloudy skies above?
When will I find my true, true love?”
“Aiyyoh, Ah Phine!” Karim moaned. “You in depression or what? Why keep singing that song only?”
Even Robert objected. As if he sensed the sadness in my voice, he would purse his lips together to sulk if I sang it whilst feeding him his Nestum cereal. Even at 14, he could eat only softened food.
“Stop it, Ah Phine!” Mak scolded. “You’re making Robert cry. Got no other song to sing or what? “
I was not a happy bunny. Even my colleagues at work noticed it.
“I think you need to get out of the hospital environment,” Sister A said to me.
She was in charge of all the nurses at the Dental Clinic in ORGH. I had been ushered into her office. Nurse Z, who was the head nurse at the Oral Surgery Department, had filed a complaint about me. I was stricken. Was I going to be sacked? I had been assigned to look after a patient in the Recovery Room after his surgery. It was my duty to check his pulse regularly and monitor him till he came out of the effect of the anesthesia that had been administered during his operation on an enlarged cyst in his oral cavity. In my nervous and emotionally upset state, I could not trace the patient’s pulse on his wrist. The more I perspired, the more my fingers became useless. The trouble was that a person’s index finger had its own pulse, so if an inexperienced nurse was not careful, she would be taking her own pulse rather than the patient’s! In a panic, I tried to find the pulse on his ankle. Still, I couldn’t feel any. I thought I’d make doubly sure before I raised the alarm that the patient had died whilst in my care. I would be sacked for sure. I desperately felt under his gown, groping up along his leg towards his thigh, when Nurse Z’s voice boomed in my ear, “I think you’ve gone high enough, Nurse Chia!”
Sister A was an affable type. She was rather large for a Chinese and had a to
fu-white, round moon-face with coal black hair. Except when she was trying to be stern, she was nearly always smiling. I was more terrified of Nurse Z than I was of Sister A, who was more senior in the nursing hierarchy.
“The nurse that goes with the dental surgeon in our mobile clinic is retiring soon,” Sister A said. “I need someone to replace her. You seem like the right kind of person if you can cope with change, as the roving dental surgeon goes to different places each week.”
“What kind of places?” I asked Sister.
“Changi Prison for one,” Sister A said. “Also Woodbridge Hospital. You have to deal with mental patients. The same nurse also goes out to St John’s Island every other Saturday for the dental surgeon to treat the drug addicts and people who are quarantined there.”
“Wow!” I said excitedly. “You mean I get to go on a boat to work?”
“Unless you plan to swim there,” Sister A said with a smile.
“Yes please, Sister!” I said.
“Oh, I have to warn you though,” Sister said gravely. “One of the places the roving dental surgeon and his assistant have to visit is Trafalgar Home, also called the Lepers’ Village next to Woodbridge.”
“What? Lepers, as in the biblical lepers? I didn’t know there was such a thing in Singapore.”
“People don’t talk much about that kind of thing,” Sister said. “But there are still a few of them around. They have been kept in a kind of commune so that they won’t infect others. Many of them still have open lesions on their skin. They are not pleasant to look at. You will have to be very thorough in disinfecting the instruments used, plus your uniform and yourself after each visit. You will also have to learn not to exhibit any reaction when you face some of them who have lost noses, fingers or other body parts to the disease. Will you be able to do that?”
Goodbye My Kampong Page 12
