“We stood in a mixture of awe and disbelief at the bottom of the residential blocks, looking up. To our eyes, the tower blocks seemed to sway against the blue-grey sky, frightful in their manifestation. The squarish flats were arranged side by side, in layered tiers, with common corridors in solid concrete blocks, ten stories high, obviously built to withstand tropical storms and raging monsoons, not like our spindly matchstick houses on stilts, thatched with attap sheaves that took the brunt of strong winds, scuttling rodents and ravaging birds. The space taken up by one attap house and one family would possibly house ten families, if not more as they were going to be piled on top of one another.
It’s so dangerous for the children, I said to George. Especially curious ones like Anthony. What if Anthony climbed on a chair to look out the window or over the corridor?
“Accompanied by several officers, electric lifts conveyed us skywards to the high-rise flats. For many it was our ever first experience to get into one and to be taken such a distance away from the ground, causing our knees to go weak and our hearts to thunder in their rib cages. Some of the older villagers clung to each other in terror that the lifts might malfunction and that we would be entombed in the claustrophobic boxes, clawing for fresh air, or that we might plunge headlong to earth, squashed against each other like dead lizards.
“Only the previous year, in late November 1972, the four-storey Robinsons Department Store at Raffles Place had caught fire. It was crowded with shoppers doing their early shopping for Christmas when an electrical short circuit caused the wires and store to burst into flames. The conflagration was so enormous that we could see it from the East Coast and many parts of Singapore, clouds of black smoke billowing into the air, the stench overpowering and horrible. Subsequent reports said that someone trapped in one of the toilets was burnt to death. Eight people tried to escape by using the lift but it became their crematorium instead; their bodies, when found, were charred beyond recognition. Black-and-white photographs of the burnt-out box and building were plastered across the newspapers. The memory of the incident was still raw in the villagers’ minds. Some of them were so terrified that they could not be persuaded to enter the death boxes and preferred to take the stairs, laboriously panting their way up step by step to the tenth floor. The officers-in-charge chose the tenth floor so that they can show us what they thought was an impressive, breathtaking view, of the estate of tall HDB towers!
This is your front door, the officers indicated.
“The entrance to the flat looked formidable, a solid wooden door with padlocks and grilles that resembled a gateway to a prison. The metal grilles on the windows on the corridor side and across the front door made each flat look like a bird cage. Apparently, it was designed to keep intruders out but looked as if it was keeping its owners in.
The grilles are for safety, the officers said as if they had heard what I said earlier. This way, the children will be safe indoors. No chance of them falling out of windows.
“We were not impressed, so used were we to our kampong houses—where the windows and doors were always thrown open in the day—that we couldn’t envisage living in such restricting circumstances. Something akin to horror clutched at our hearts. We whispered our misgivings amongst ourselves. The officers wiped their brows in nervous agitation at the grunts of disapproval. They had the unenviable task of making us fall in love with the flats and this new way of living. After all, nobody really set out to make anyone unhappy. The officers, like those in command, wanted us to be happy, housed in better living conditions. They counted on our good sense—and our votes. This was a necessary move. Relocation was the order of the day. No arguments. No disputes. Progress for the country must take precedence over the discomfort of a few.
Come in, come in, the bright young female officer, Miss Hong, said with feigned good cheer. You will love the modern amenities…
“We were ushered into the spanking new flats. The pristine cleanliness was beyond anything we had ever seen, so we did oooh-and-ahh. We had taken off our footwear and had left them by the front door as was our habit so our feet felt cool yet strange on the expensive mosaic tiles, as we had been accustomed to walking barefoot on our wooden floorboards. Our fingers traced the smooth, plastered walls and formica surfaces of the worktop, the custom-made kitchen units, and shiny, stainless steel sinks and taps. These were a far cry from the wooden walls of our kampong houses, brushed with kapor, a whitewash of slaked lime, an enamel bowl for washing up and an earthen jar, called a tempayan, to fill with water drawn from the village’s communal well. For some moments, we were lost in an aura of magic, as if we had time-travelled and arrived in the twentieth century in modern Singapore. You have to remember that many of us had never set foot in a concrete modern house before. Singapore was still largely rural, with many vegetable farms
