Pansy rode past the Canossian Convent Retreat for nuns, a simple wooden house surrounded by a modest garden. The Convent School was in Aljunied, but they used this place as a retreat. The majority of the nuns were still Caucasians. Most of the time, the nuns were unseen and unheard. Except when they went swimming. The village kids turned out in droves to watch and giggle behind the palm trees because the nuns swam fully clothed, in their white habits. The moment the Sisters stepped waist deep into the sea, their habits ballooned upwards from the water rushing underneath, making them look like a bevy of floating white swans.
Suddenly, Pansy burst out of the lane into a wide, open space. A neat row of rain trees with their parachute-curved canopies greeted her, their lower branches cradling the leafy epiphytes of bird’s nest ferns. Across the field were her two favourite banyan trees, standing tall and proud, presumably like Sister Catherine’s oak tree, though these were strung with the kind of thick vines that Tarzan would have swung from, their crowns thick with large leaves. The village children often came here to pretend they were Tarzan. But fortunately they were not around today. The trees were the same breed and had a similar majesty as the one standing at Bedok Corner. They stood beside each other, yet were apart, and Pansy’s fanciful mind conjured up a story of some wicked witch who had cursed two young lovers because she was spurned by one of them and turned them into trees, so that they were within aching sight of each other, but were not close enough to touch.
“Good afternoon, Rama, Sita,” Pansy addressed them affectionately, as she normally did upon arriving. She named them after the renowned lovers from Valmiki’s epic Hindu poem, Ramayana. True to its description as an epic, the poem consists of nearly 50,000 lines couched in 24,000 shlokas or verses. Pansy had read part of it in an English translation. She had also read the poetic Bhagavad Gita: The Song of God. But these poetic verse epics are not about flowers and nature, but about the human condition and metaphysical aspirations.
“Don’t despair,” Pansy said to the couple. “Tell me what I can do to break the wicked witch’s spell. I promise you that one day when I meet the witch, I will force her to change you back! And you can be in each other’s arms again.”
Rama and Sita stood in solemn silence facing the lake, her Lake Windermere— Rama was the nearer one. The banks of the kolam were steep. Enough time had passed since the last excavations, so wild bushes and ground growth masked the hard edges and sheer sides that the bulldozers had inflicted so that the lake seemed almost natural. At its base was an uncanny bright blue pool; apparently its colour was a result of some kind of oxidation of minerals and seashell unearthed during the excavation, though Pansy pretended that the colour was due to the lake being under the blue sky of England. A large signboard by its edge said, ‘Danger! No Swimming’.
Pansy lay her bicycle down and sat against Rama, who was closer to the lake. All around her were fields of wild lallang, and forests of slim and tall eponymous Changi trees, which gave the neighbourhood its name. Pansy could see the hill across Sungei Bedok, which formed part of Tanah Merah Kechil, with its red earth, that gave the place its Malay name. She could just about see the top of Haji Kahar’s magnificent two-storey wooden bungalow with its green shutters, on Haji Salam Road. The rags to riches Sumatran entrepreneur Haji Kahar had been well respected in the community; his shop in Arab Street was famous, though the road, Haji Salam, was named after the village headman out of respect.
There was a certain tranquillity about the rustic scene, the tall, sharp-blade grass, a tracery of creepers festooned across low branches of trees, the purple Morning Glory and Marigold interwoven amongst them; grasshoppers leaping in beautiful arcs, butterflies and birds flitting here and there, chattering. To Pansy’s joy, a fairly rare Blue Pansy butterfly came to rest briefly on her shoulder, decidedly male because of its bright blue wings and eye-spots. How uncanny that her namesake should seek her out.
“Am I a man who dreamt of being a butterfly, or am I a butterfly dreaming that I am a man?” she quoted Chuang Tze, the Chinese philosopher.
Suddenly, a lime green parrot swept past Pansy, its beautiful long tail opened out like a delicate fan, followed quickly by another, the two of them circulating round each other in such a playful way that Pansy fancied she could almost hear them laughing gaily. From the pages of her memory, Pansy remembered a ditty Sister Catherine had taught her, which English people were supposed to have recited to count the number of magpies that flew into their sight:
One for Sorrow
Two for Joy
Three for a letter
Four for a Boy
Five for Silver
Six for Gold
Seven for a Secret never to be Told
Apparently it was bad luck to see one single magpie on its own. But there was no such superstition attached to a colourful parrot. Anyway, she had seen two parrots. Pansy was pleased. So joy awaits her then. But wait! There were more parrots flying into her sight. Pansy counted and recited, Four! She counted four parrots. Four for a Boy. A boy. Did it refer to that obnoxious boy, or was it to be another she was to meet in the future? What was the possibility of a boy appearing to her here in this remote part of the coast? Besides, her mother would skin her alive if she should be seen with a boy on her own.
Pansy sat down, her back resting against Rama as she studied the shape of clouds for a while, imagining seeing a drifting
