There was a visible improvement in our lives since our country’s independence. Our village road was lighted. We had electricity! In our house, we had two fluorescent tubes, one for the kitchen and the other for the rest of the house. The tubes fizzled occasionally and were unnaturally bright but they were better than candlelight. For some reason, they attracted the flying ants, which would fly into our houses in great clouds, getting into our eyes, mouths and noses. Parents would smoke them out with kemenyen, a rock incense, or by burning sabut, the husk of an old coconut. The coconut tree provided a myriad of uses besides its fruit for eating or its water for drinking. We could make oil from its dried kernels called copra, its shell was used as a scoop, the husk used for burning, the leaf woven for making ketupat or mats, the stem of the leaf to make brooms called sapu lidi, and so forth. For days afterwards, we would find the silvery wings of the burnt ants in our shoes, clothes and crockery!
Our civil servant neighbour, Uncle Krishnan, was well ahead of us—he had installed a telephone in his house and bought himself a Ford Prefect, which would have been unheard of five years ago. He was the talk of our entire village! His well-polished Ford Prefect stood outside his house, an emblem of his success.
“Wah! Uncle Krishnan!” Karim, our resident musician said, clapping him on the back. “Very nice motor! You are doing really well. You are the first in our village to own a private car, have a telephone and an ice box!”
Uncle Krishnan beamed.
“Any emergency, you can come and use my telephone,” he said generously. “No need to queue at the public telephone booth.”
We only had one telephone box in the village, so it was good that Uncle Krishnan had the instrument in his house also. I wondered if he expected us to put coins into it like at the public telephone. The telephone booth was the type that Clark Kent would dash into, where he’d rip off his clothes and emerge from it as Superman. Like other village kids, I was on a diet of Beano and Marvel comics, enjoying the rescue missions of superheroes and the antics of Desperate Dan, Dennis the Menace and Richie Rich.
I dreamt of having the sheer luxury of an ice box in our house, in which we could keep our food, and not have to rely on the meat-safe. The feet of the wooden meat-safe sat in saucers of water so that ants would not be able to climb up to devour our food. Its doors were made of lattice-worked rattan so that the food could breathe and not be stifled into putrefaction. But with our tropical heat, even the meat-safe could not preserve the food for too long. What a thrill it would be to have a refrigerator where food could be kept for days! There wouldn’t be any wastage. Plus, you could have ice cubes in your F&N Orange or Sarsi every day! The local kopi tiam also bought an ice box, and they started selling ayer batu Malaysia. Why it was called Malaysian ice cubes, we were not very sure. But it was an ingenious way to make money. All it took was to pour coloured syrup water into ice-cube trays, freeze them and sell them in cubes of three, for five cents! It was a huge thrill for us to be able to buy them and suck, till our cheeks ached with the cold.
The Industrial Revolution in the early nineteenth century was a turning point in human development and history.
The use of steam and water power, plus machinery took over from hand production and old fashioned physical labour. Great Britain paved the way for the rest of the world, innovating with the factory system as opposed to unsophisticated cottage industries. Improvements were made in gas lighting, which allowed factories and stores to remain open after dark. Methods of coal mining became more efficient so fuel was available to create machine tools and machinery for agricultural production, textile making, paper, glass, cement and other products. Canals, roads and railways could be built with ease to transport goods across larger regions. This helped to improve the country’s economy and gave jobs to millions. So, more work became available and women were called away from their hearths to work outside of their homes.
Likewise, a kind of industrial revolution was taking place in Singapore, obviously not on the scale of its namesake, but it was a revolution that would change Singapore’s status forever. It also provided jobs for thousands, and gave women the opportunity to work outside of their own homes.
This was the foresight of Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew, his solution for alleviating the mass poverty and job shortage in our country. To kick-start foreign investments in Singapore, Mr Lee gave tax-holidays to organisations and conglomerates who would set up their manufacturing factories in Singapore. With planning and foresight, thousands of jobs were suddenly created. As the factories needed to be built, masses of people were employed. The samsui women in their Hailam Blue outfit, carrying wicker baskets of bricks and masonry, became a familiar sight. Singapore transformed into a giant construction site as many multi-storeyed buildings began to take shape. This took place in conjunction with the creation of high-rise residential flats built under the auspices of first the Singapore Improvement Trust (SIT), then HDB, which was established in 1960 to provide quality public housing, replacing attap houses.
Indeed, we could feel the wind of change upon us. Already the
