“Tak seronoh sekali! Not delicate!” he pontificated. “Intimate items of clothing and parts of the body should be seen by only your husband. Only cabaret girls and prostitutes can show theirs, okay!”
He still insisted that my sisters and I had to wear petticoats under our skirts and dresses in case the sun shone brightly through the fabric of our skirts to give hints of our inner thighs! If Ah Tetia had his way, I would be dressed like a nun all my teenage years! I had an intimate taste of my father’s belt and buckle which had rendered me unconscious once, so all I could express was a murmur of rebellion. Anything more audible would be to risk life and limb.
Nineteen sixty-six was a teething year for the development of our country. We learnt the new feeling of nationhood and taking pride in our own nation. When the Kandang Kerbau maternity hospital won the Guinness World Record for having the highest number of births of 40,000 babies in a year in a maternity hospital, we shared in the joy of the achievement. The name of the hospital had always been one of amusement amongst locals. The Malay words “kandang kerbau” referred to the sheds for cattle! The area was known for its fields, where cows grazed and were housed, thus the nearby roads reflected this, such as Buffalo Road. When they built the maternity hospital, one would have thought the authorities would have had the sense to change its name, as the appellation gave the impression that the pregnant women were the cattle. Fortunately, as the name was a bit long, and many non-Malays could not pronounce it properly, the maternity hospital became abbreviated to KK, which was how most people knew it, instead of its full name.
Despite our small success, 1966 had not ended well for our country. There had been a murmur of rebellion, which lasted 26 days. In October of that year, 1,000 students from Nanyang University staged a demonstration, when the Prime Minister was due to open its new library. They were advocating for greater academic freedom and for Chinese-educated graduates to be given jobs in the civil service. On 4 November, Ngee Ann College students went on a rampage at City Hall.
“Aiyyah,” Uncle Krishnan, our wise civil servant villager had said, after the villagers heard the news on Rediffusion. “People think it’s so easy to govern a country. Some people want this, some people want that…”
Before the advent of TV, Rediffusion was an important source for illiterate kampong folks to get the news and to be entertained, as the majority could not read. Besides English, Malay and Tamil, there were many programmes in Hokkien, Teochew and Cantonese, so that dialect speakers could get the news and be entertained too.
“But they are right to protest what,” our resident complainer Ah Gu said. “Why should only English-educated people serve the country, huh? Why can’t we get to University of Singapore? Why can’t we be in the civil service. Not fair right? Why? We Chinese-educated not so good or what?”
“Ah Gu,” my father said to his friend. “Don’t be so grumpy lah! Historically, the Chinese-educated always saw China as their native home what. Many were communists. So how can the government trust that they will put Singapore first?”
“Cannot trust meh? I think very prejudice hor! Not all Chinese who want to adhere to their culture and respect their ancestors are communists ah!”
“Ya, not easy to govern a country lah,” Pak Osman said, to defuse the situation. “You young people listen to me ah! I may not be around for long ah. You got to give this Mr Lee Kuan Yew (LKY) some chance. He’s our first homegrown leader. Suddenly power is foisted on him. His situation is like that of a young man marrying a widow with 16 kids! Overnight, he has to feed a ready-made family and be responsible for them. So, the same for LKY. With our country being thrown out of Malaysia, he has suddenly gained a new nation and responsibilities. He has also inherited huge problems that the British have left behind: Not enough jobs, so not enough food; not enough houses for our growing population. He has to develop our country’s defence before the British military pull out. Wah! So much to do. Very big headache for our Prime Minister, you know…”
I wondered why Pak Osman had talked about not being around for much longer. Was Pak Osman prescient? I would miss Pak Osman when he went. He had an innate wisdom, like my mother, and he knew how to put things across tactfully.
In his 1967 New Year message, Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew injected his voice with a positive note: “We will survive without the British.”
He and his team must have sensed the slight feeling of unease in the country. Some of the people had not yet gotten used to the fact that we were indeed irrevocably separated from Malaysia and were on our own. We had travelled freely up-country before the separation, so we felt cut off as we now needed to have a passport to cross the Causeway. A special passport was issued, specifically for use for going into Malaysia only. The dust from the separation hadn’t settled completely. Come 12 June, we would have a separate currency from Malaysia. Since 1953 we had been using the Malaya and Borneo Dollar issued by the Board of Commissioners of Currency. Soon we would be using a different currency. All this was unsettling for the common folks. Then there was the apprehension that maybe we couldn’t make it on our own without the British. It was not an easy time, for the
