Across our island, the government had set up relief centres to help the thousands of victims. Amazingly, though many were injured, there were only five recorded fatalities. The widespread flood was the worst in decades. The Meteorological Department announced that we had 12 inches of rain in a short time. Bukit Timah Road went under three feet of water. The Straits Times published the dramatic photos.
“In all my years in this kampong,” Pak Osman said, “I don’t think I have experienced such a phenomenal flood. Hope I don’t see one like this again.”
The aftermath was just as deadly. An eerie silence descended as the murky water stood in sullen stillness before it slowly dissipated. Mosquitoes and flies proliferated. The receding flood left a film of mud and debris. Animals and broken parts of houses, furniture and other items lay like wounded beasts, sprawled across the chaotic, muddy landscape. The most tragic was whenever a body was found, especially when it was that of a child, the mother would wail in high-pitched pain. There were pools of stagnant water everywhere, but our wells were polluted and the village communal pipe was damaged, so we had none to drink. The government’s response was swift. The PUB sent out water supply trucks and we queued patiently with our pails and buckets. Mosquitoes proliferated. Medical teams came out to inoculate us. Our village was quarantined. We could not leave until we were cleared of any infectious disease. For some weeks, the manufacturing factories and offices across the country experienced a slow down due to the absence of workers. This was the first nationwide disaster that affected the whole country. Prime Minister Lee promised that he was going to tackle the severe drainage problem in the country that had been exacerbated by the heavy monsoon rains. He promised us that there would not be such a bad flood ever again. We were relieved to hear his optimistic pledge though Ah Gu, our eternal village pessimist said, “Ya, ya. All politicians make promises.”
In an epidemic, the ones that are likely to be most vulnerable are the young and the very old. Pak Osman, our most respected and beloved villager, once our wise village headman, succumbed to cholera. He was right; he would never see another flood in our village again. Perhaps he was prescient. On our journey to see our independent nation’s first National Day Parade, he had expressed the thought that it was going to be his last. His death was a great loss for us. His family and the Muslim community carried his body to Masjid Alkaff Serangoon for the interring ceremony. (The other Masjid Alkaff was in Kampong Melayu near Bedok.) Ours was opposite our village, crossing Upper Serangoon Road to Wan Tho Avenue, and then shortly turning left into Pheng Geck Avenue. We trailed behind in grief. He was the stalwart of the village and now he was gone, the sunshine that he had spread with his presence and wisdom had been snuffed out.
The small mosque had a beautiful minaret with a green crescent and star at the top. The roof was red-tiled with edges of green, its walls pure white. If one stood in the tower, one could see the whole of the Bidadari cemetery and the tops of our village. The mosque was built in 1930 by Syed Abdul Rahman Alkaff, whose ancestors had arrived in Singapore in 1852 from Indonesia. Shaik Alkaff was a successful businessman, who had created the famous Alkaff Gardens which ran alongside Bidadari. The Gardens with its lake were so beautiful that film crews had come to do their filming here. The area was our recreational centre, where we ran up and down the small hillocks, played hide-and-seek, swam and sailed on the lake. I considered it my good fortune to have to pass the scenic place on my way to Cedar School daily, first the Primary School, then the Secondary, whose location was adjacent to Bidadari Cemetery. When I was little, and Mak had taken me to afternoon school, we would often stop at Alkaff Gardens to eat our nasi lemak there.
Every Friday, when the muezzin called the faithful to prayer from the tower of the mosque, the sound would spread its joy to our kampong. The place also acted like a community centre for Muslims, a refuge where they gathered, prayed and communed with each other. During feast days, the mosque gave out food to the needy in the surrounding villages.
Our male neighbours could enter the mosque but as women, Fatima, other female neighbours, my mother, and I were not allowed into the portion of the mosque reserved for men. We stood at the wing side of the mosque, saying our silent goodbye to Pak Osman. He had symbolised kampong life, and his passing seemed to suggest its demise as well.
True enough, not long afterwards, we were horrified to see huge earth movers and bull dozers descend upon Alkaff Gardens. Pak Osman’s heart would have broken as ours did when we watched the trees being rudely uprooted by the steel cranes, then followed by lorry after lorry dumping sand and gravel into our beautiful lake, sealing it forever. The hills were flattened, and along with them, our memories. The excavated earth was red and raw as if
