Even the rain that poured down later did not dampen our spirits. In the evening, we returned to the Esplanade for a view of the 500-foot long sea dragon. This was an elongated cellophane Chinese dragon that was supposed to rise to a height of 40 feet! The sky was ablaze with the pinks and reds of the setting sun. The casuarina trees, called rhu in Malay, which gave Tanjung Rhu, the nearby promontory, its eponymous name, started whispering in the breeze. Their soft needles rained on us. As the natural light faded away, the shadows melted into each other and the lamps along the Esplanade were lit. There was an audible murmuring excitement amongst those waiting. And then the sea dragon made its appearance, cheered on by the crowd. It was lighted with 12,500 bulbs and was towed by the small boats which sailed past the Esplanade and swept in front of us with majesty. We were filled with awe and pride. It was our nation’s first birthday and we knew we were watching history in the making. This moment would not happen again.
“Merdeka!” someone exclaimed.
The Malay word for “freedom”, translated as “independence”, fizzed in the air. At last, we were truly free. For eons, Singapore had been under the rule of so many different masters, first the kings of Palembang, then the Johor Sultanate, the British, the Japanese, then the British again, then Malaysians, and now at long last we were our own rulers. The significance and enormity of it seemed to hit all those who were there. We were quivering with emotion. Suddenly a thicket of fists shot into the air.
“Merdeka! Merdeka,” people shouted in unison again and again, and the sound carried on the wind across our island nation.
A Murmur Rebellion
(1967)
WHEN 17-year-old Twiggy, with her androgynous look, burst onto the world fashion stage, she gave me some hope about myself. British model Lesley Hornby had shot to fame with her thin frame, which gave her the nickname. She was gorgeous, with large eyes, long eyelashes, and short hair. The previous year, she was named “The Face of 1966”, and was voted British Woman of the Year. My only resemblance to Twiggy was my skinny body and short hair. But the important thing was that she made me feel that it was okay to have a chest as flat as an airport. Not every woman could be as buxom as Esther Williams, Jayne Mansfield or Mae West. Very few women could look as stunning as Raquel Welch in her doe-skin bikini in the 1966 British-made film, One Million Years BC. She spoke only about three lines in the entire movie, but her voluptuous figure won her adoring fans and turned her into an overnight sensation, poster girl and star.
Alas, Ah Tetia’s potent words had rubbed off on me and I thought very little of myself and felt ugly. Looking in the mirror was like watching an Alfred Hitchcock suspense film—what horror would I see in myself? My thick glasses with their black frame made me look like a blind bat. I was brown and not pretty like fair-skinned cousin Mary or my younger sisters. My family was divided into the dark and fair ones. My eldest and Third Elder Brother and I took after our mother’s nutmeg complexion, whilst my second brother and Robert and our sisters took after our father’s fair skin. To make matters worse, my front teeth were crooked! I had an underbite—where the lower teeth protruded in front of the upper ones when I bit. Certainly, far from attractive. So I dared not open my mouth. Fortunately though, I had strong teeth and didn’t need any dental treatment, as the itinerant dentist who periodically visited our village gave me the shivers! His patients sat on wooden stools whilst he treated them in their houses. There was no assigned clinic. When you saw him attending to someone’s teeth, his hands in his patient’s wide-open mouth as his foot peddled furiously on his treadle drill with its high-pitched sound, you would think he was torturing the patient!
I recalled that when I started school in Primary One, the World Health Organisation, or WHO, had supplied our school with cow’s milk and a toothbrush for each child. We were after all a Third World country, and many of us were still impoverished and suffering from malnutrition. It was a morning ritual at school to queue for our compulsory mug of milk. Since we were used to drinking only sweetened condensed milk, the powdered milk provided by WHO tasted horrible. So, I had furtively brought a packet of sugar to spoon into my mug, till the teacher caught me. After drinking the milk, we had to crouch by our school drain in a row to brush our teeth, supervised by our teachers. It was the first time that I had learnt to use a toothbrush! It was a miracle that I hadn’t lost all my teeth to the boiled sweets, especially the gula melaka squares, and round gem biscuits with their colourful hardened icing.
But I was no longer a child. Worse, I was in the throes of teenage angst. I disliked many things about myself. My longish legs were reasonably passable though. If only Ah Tetia would permit me to wear a mini-skirt, no one would focus on my horrible teeth! The mini-skirt was a new fashion rage started by Welsh designer Mary Quant. Twiggy wore this with aplomb, along with her thigh-high boots. Suddenly our High Street and Orchard Road swarmed with young girls, eyes ringed with kohl and false eyelashes like Twiggy, and wearing mini-skirts with boots. Local pop singer and yodeler, Sakura Teng aka Ying Hua, led the way here, wearing a short shift dress with her long boots. At 17, she became famous with her song, ‘I Don't Care If Tomorrow Never Comes’. Her singing partner, Rita Chao, sang both English and Mandarin songs, though Rita had
