So you will move with us then, Mak?
Yes. I will take Hock Chye’s spirit-tablet so that he will move with us too.
“The government was not ruthless; there was concern about the soon-to-be-displaced people. They sent people to explain the huge exodus to us. Compensation was meted out according to the size of each villager’s house, the plot of land, the number and type of fruit trees there were: fifty cents for a coconut tree, one dollar for a mango tree and so forth. But there was no compensation for flowering shrubs or herbs. My mother had spent years cultivating her garden so that it would yield the flowers for her bunga rampay, the herbs for her cooking and nasi ulam, healing plants for her potions.
“I agonised with my mother as I watched her walk through her garden, bending over to touch a plant or smell a flower, living things which her own hands had seeded and nurtured into healthy growth. Her face was pinched and she looked as if she was desperately trying to commit everything to memory as she bade them goodbye. If we moved to a house with a garden, we could salvage one or two plants but not all.”
Bad news, Pak Abdul said to the fishermen. The PSA has said they will charge each man five hundred to nine hundred dollars to sink your sampan for you.
“The PSA was the Port of Singapore Authority. Firstly, the thought of having their sampans sunk was painful to the fishermen. It was not just their tool of trade but was part of their way of life. Secondly, the price to do it was a ridiculous amount, at a time when rent for a house was less than fifteen dollars per month and nasi lemak cost ten cents per packet. The sum would eat into a large chunk of the fisherfolk’s earnings, especially when these were not much to start with, as they had to sell their catch of fish at wholesale prices to distributors, hawkers and stallholders from the markets.
F*** their mothers’ c****! several men mouthed the expletives in Malay.
“It was bad enough that they had to change their entire lifestyle with little compensation for the move, and less still for the loss of their livelihood—now they were told they had to pay for getting rid of their boats! The fishermen spoke in irate tones. The air was blue. Pak Abdul had to let the men vent their spleen, so he made the women cover their ears and shooed the children out of earshot.
“Your grandfather was furious.
Typical bloody morons! he fumed about the PSA officers. Don’t these people have even an ounce of humanity? Can’t they see how traumatic all this is for the villagers? Do they have to add insult to injury?
“As the majority of the fishermen were uneducated, they did not know how to appeal for their cause. So George went to the PSA and kicked up a fuss, tried to barge through the doors of government offices, including the MP’s. He waited for hours and got nowhere. He wrote out a petition and tried to get his colleagues in the hospital to sign it.
Be careful, George, his colleagues warned him, afraid to lend their clout to the petition though they sympathised with the fishermen’s plight. This is a government that will not brook any dissent. You’ve heard of political adversaries who have been put behind bars with no recourse to trial.
George, Pak Abdul said with a worried voice. You have a family. Don’t jeopardise their welfare. Let the matter drop. We cannot fight the authorities…
We prefer to burn our own boats then pay for them to be sunk by the bastards… the fishermen said to Pak Abdul after they held their own meeting.
“This was what the English called Hobson’s choice; neither choice was palatable.
Yes, I agree. We will show them that we are man enough to carry out this enforced atrocity. Let’s all have one final evening together of feasting before we do the deed, said Pak Abdul. We will never be the same community ever again. Let us try to be merry, for it will be our last memory of our life together. Besides the food, the women can prepare the bunga rampay and make garlands of flowers, which we will throw into the sea as tribute for our way of life that is now going to become extinct… His voice broke.
“All of us had to rouse ourselves from the weight of our sorrow over the pending separation from each other, the destruction of our homes, and the move into alien territory. We spent all week preparing the feast. In a way this was good as it prevented us from grieving prematurely. The Malay women prepared the ketupat, using coconut leaves from our own trees, which would soon be uprooted. They weaved the leaves into small boxes to fill with uncooked rice to boil till it became a compressed rice cake. Some of them made roti jala, a light crepe that looked like its eponymous name, a net. Others prepared all the unsold fish from the final catch. The Indian women made chapatis and curries. My mother made her famous nasi ulam. I prepared the bunga rampay, knowing with a heavy heart that this was the last time I would be able to pick flowers from our own garden, which was soon to be uprooted. I worried about my beautiful butterflies. Where would they go?
“Your grandfather refused to let things be. He used the hospital’s telephone to call the press of the different language papers.
You have to come and witness the sacrilege. These poor fishermen are being ousted from their homes and their livelihood and they even have to burn their own boats. Come and take pictures and splash them all over the front pages for the world to see.
“That evening, we sat on straw
