“You are so beautiful!” Pansy says, standing up to envelope Goldie in her arms. “Oh, Mak! It’s so good to see you again. Have you come to take me home?”
Chapter 13
Anthony’s iPhone sings ‘I Dreamed A Dream’ from Les Miserable at 3am.
“Oh, for Crissakes, why don’t you turn the bloody thing off?” Emily grumbles at being rudely awakened. She hates the song, knowing how gooey-eyed Anthony gets over Anne Hathaway.
“Sorry, sorry, sorry,” he mumbles sleepily as he scrambles for his mobile on the bedside table. “You know I have to keep the phone on for my overseas contacts…”
He glances at the lit-up panel and sees that it’s a CNA message.
“Oh, no!” he cries out.
“What, what, what?” Emily says springing up, a mother’s instinct on red alert.
“CNA just announced that Lee Kuan Yew has died,” he says.
“Oh…” Emily goes.
“I had hoped that they will keep him on his resuscitator till 9 August…”
“It’s only 23 March,” Emily says. “That will be too much to ask…”
“It’s the end of an era,” Anthony says.
In united grief, they sit in silence in the darkness, unable to articulate their feelings, unable to get back to sleep. Anthony’s hand reaches out to clasp Emily’s. For once she does not slap his away.
The nation wakes to the sad news. His son, the present prime minister, Lee Hsien Loong, publicly announces his father’s death with measured tones, trying to remain stoic, his personal and political lives clashing. But the TV cameras catch the trembling of his lips and the tremor in the corner of his eyes. He declares a week of mourning.
Like mushrooms, tribute centres sprout up all over Singapore where memorial ceremonies are carried out and where people can pay their last respects, the citizens told where to take their flowers and where to sign condolence books. People line the streets outside the Istana to wait for the ceremonial gun carriage that is carrying the casket from his ministerial home, Sri Temasek, to appear. It will journey to Parliament House where Lee Kuan Yew would lie in state for a week. The lone Gurkha, dressed in a Scottish kilt, standing on the rooftop level of the Istana plays ‘Auld Lang Syne’ plaintively on his bagpipes as the national flag flies at half-mast. People had queued outside the Istana as early as the previous night to get a good vantage point behind the crash barriers. People shout Mr Lee’s name as the cortege appears from the Istana gates and proceeds up Orchard Road, through Bras Basah Road, down North Bridge Road to Parliament Lane.
“Lee Kuan Yew! Lee Kuan Yew!” The crowd shout in unison, the name echoing down the streets as the casket passes others, some voices breaking in mid-syllable. Cameras hone in on adults weeping openly, transmitting the emotion to all those watching, infectious in its intensity. All TV programmes on the main terrestrial channels have been suspended for the duration of the procession, which is telecast live in English, Malay, Chinese and Tamil.
Throughout the entire week, video clips of Lee Kuan Yew’s political rise were aired. His epiphany had come when he was studying at Cambridge University and he realised that he was as capable of governing his own country as the British. The video clips flashing every second of each day of the week of mourning, remind Singaporeans of Lee Kuan Yew’s brilliance and foresight.
People from all walks of life are interviewed on radio and TV.
“He was a great man,” many say.
“We will still have swamps and rats and poverty without him,” others lament.
“You only need to look at Singapore today and you see how he had spent his life. Dedicated to us!” many cry out with some vicarious pride.
Pansy, like all the others in the nursing home, is glued to the TV watching the continuing telecasts. Some of the videos are in black-and-white, as was the one of him weeping, wiping his face with a large handkerchief when he announced that Singapore was ousted out of the nation of Malaysia. Once seen by almost two million people, his anguish is now telecast to nearly six million people. Where had she watched that dramatic scene when it took place? Was it at the village coffeeshop that had a television? Pansy rakes her brain but can’t quite recall her exact location whilst she was watching the historic moment. Then, when a video clip of Lee Kuan Yew comes on showing his major walkabout in 1959 to all the shanty villages and kampongs of Singapore to rally for people to vote in his new political party, the People’s Action Party (PAP), Pansy sits up in alertness.
“I remember that day,” she says aloud. “I remember when he came to Kampong Tepi Laut to talk to us!”
“It’s ironic that she can’t remember whether she has eaten or not today and yet she can remember seeing Lee Kuan Yew in 1959,” a nursing aide, shaking her head, says sotto voce to her colleague. “Bless her!”
Pansy was twenty-three and was a new mother when Pak Abdul told the villagers, “Let us prepare a feast for the rally. Kenduri! It is time for change. What did I tell you? Change is in the air!”
Pak Abdul had used the same words in 1953 when a group of them had gone to watch the ceremony at the Padang to celebrate Queen Elizabeth’s ascension to the throne. Their new queen. It had been Pansy’s first public date with George though they were chaperoned by her mother and many others from the village.
“The Singapore people are voting for independence,” he said. “Soon, we don’t have to swear allegiance to the English queen. Several different groups of people will be coming through the village to win
