If it was all kosher, then we knew that we were watching history in the making! We were beside ourselves with excitement and tension. The black and white image on TV crackled and was blurred, but we could see Neil Armstrong in his chunky space suit, taking his first step on the surface of the moon.
“It’s one small step for man, but a giant leap for mankind,” he said, though not very audibly.
Considering that the telecast was coming at such long distance from the moon, all of us who were watching felt delirious with joy to see him take that first, bouncy moon-step. We presumed he meant “one small step for a man…,” and later there was a controversy about whether he did use the article, though he said he did in subsequent media interviews. But it was just semantics and grammar. The point was, the Americans had landed on the moon, so the space race to be first on the moon was over. Apollo 11 had achieved what John F. Kennedy had proposed before Congress in 1961, “before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the Earth.”
If there is truly an afterlife, I hoped that John F. Kennedy was also watching the event unfold.
In December, Mr Lee Kuan Yew and his team had to deal with a national catastrophe. Kampong Potong Pasir had suffered a huge flood in 1954, and again in 1967. It looked as though we were due for another major flooding. This time, not just our village but the whole island as it had been raining heavily since October. It reached its height on 10 December when our Malay friends and neighbours were preparing to celebrate Hari Raya Puasa.
The winds howled and the monsoonal rains battered everything in their paths. Moving curtains of rain made visibility poor. Crowns of raindrops spat and dug at our sandy lorongs, creating more potholes. Our farmers could not farm. Our fishermen could not fish. Those on the coast could not go out to sea, their sampans bobbing like small ineffectual corks on the rolling sea. The tall waves, unusual for these parts, thrashed the shore repeatedly, bringing down the swaying palm trees. Some of the kelongs, offshore fishing traps with spindly rows of bamboo poles around an attap hut, collapsed; the livelihood of the fishermen was lost. Coastal kampongs, with houses on stilts, were in real danger as the wind howled and battered the flimsy structures.
Trades that were normally conducted along the pavements of banks and office buildings, like the barber stall, the Chinese Pavement Library, the letter writer, the fortune teller and hawkers, had to be given up as the vicious wind tugged at lean-tos and sheets of tarpaulin, sending them headlong into innocent bystanders. The pasar malams, night markets of stalls plying their wares outdoors in the evenings, were also cancelled. On the streets, traffic snarled, drivers hooting because they could not see ahead. Anything lightweight flew about, not just paper or cardboard. The force of the wind was so great that even buckets, stools, chickens, ducks and small dogs were lifted into the air. The flying debris smashed into legs and faces, wounding people. Waxed paper umbrellas mushroomed uselessly upwards, rain pouring down the heads and necks of the people who carried them. TV aerials on our roofs shifted, slanted and got bent. Electrical cables snapped, sparked and fizzed, threatening lives.
“Take cover! Take cover!” voices warned in our kampong.
Coconut palms swooshed violently, dislodging their coconuts. People scattered in sheer panic to avoid being thumped on the head. The falling coconuts shot through our attap roofs, opening big holes in the sheaves of attap. Some exploded like little bombs when they hit the ground, breaking apart and spilling out their water and scattering sharp shrapnel of kernel. Even worse, the durian trees were also chucking down their fruits. It took seven years for a durian tree to fruit and the durian was never plucked, as it had to reach its own ripeness to fall, for it to be at its delicious best. Called King of the Malayan fruits, the durian was named after its chunky thorns or duri in Malay, durian meaning lots of thorns. Their hard outer layer protected the soft and rich custardy fruits, lying in segments, inside. The durian had a very distinctive aroma, shared by no other fruit, and was either the boon or bane of people. There was no neutral reaction possible to its smell. You either loved it or hated it. Everyone hated them that season, when they came hurtling down dangerously, like ill-aimed lethal missiles.
On top of that, our village river began to swell, a frightening sight to behold.
“Hurry! Hurry! Hurry!” Karim shouted instructions to the villagers, as the men formed human chains to pass the heavy sandbags.
Our men were assisting the soldiers, who were sent to fortify the banks against the river. The newly-recruited national servicemen were sent out to help, clad in fatigue raincoats. The government had sent lorry loads of sandbags to shore up the banks of our portion of the Kallang River, as the level of the water kept on rising. There was frenetic activity everywhere. Women and children at home were piling things on top of tables, and storing money, jewellery and birth certificates in biscuit tins. Shopkeepers were packing away their goods to higher shelves. Some people were building rafts from used tyres, with old coconuts as buoys. Others lashed rattan chairs for the old and infirm on their wooden rafts. Sandbags were hurriedly wedged outside our doorways.
Still the water rose.
It was the same scenario all over the country, and many low-lying areas were in imminent peril of flooding. The torrential rain refused to abate. Whampoa River, which joined Kallang River just a short distance away from Potong Pasir in the Kolam Ayer and
