Since he became Prime Minister, Mr Lee Kuan Yew was making education a priority for everyone, including girls, as he saw that education was “an avenue out of poverty”. It was a simple yet life-changing statement and policy. No one would remain uneducated anymore. I nearly became one of those, had my mother not fought with my father, to enable me to go to school. Now schools were sprouting like dragon-teeth, and education was put within reach of all kampong children. Education gave us a precious key to knowledge and opportunities, which we did not have before. But people like Abu, Fatima and our dear, departed friend, Parvathi, had missed the boat. I got upset when people called my kampong friends stupid because they could not speak English and were not learnt. They might be ignorant but they had never been stupid. They simply lacked opportunities and choices.
“Ah Phine, Ah Phine,” Abu comforted me. He addressed me as everyone did in the village. They, like my family and the uneducated neighbours, found a three-syllable English name like Josephine, given to me by the English priest who converted us, hard to pronounce. “It’s okay. Intelligence is not just about reading the alphabet. Once I have accumulated enough, I will start a company, engage my own labourers and supply casual labour to small construction companies.”
I also prayed that Abu would be able to realise his dream.
I had hoped to get into our communal bathroom to have a quick wash before my parents saw the state I was in. The bilek mandi or bathroom had no roof and was open to the tops of trees and the sky. Cheeky boys always climbed the trees when a pretty girl bathed. But I was in no danger. The makchiks or old ladies would prod the boys down with long poles that had a hook at one end, which was used for dislodging soft fruits from trees. Wooden planks surrounded our deep well, laid with bricks at its mouth, and the floor was cement. But it was not my lucky day. The bathroom was occupied. Also, my father, Ah Tetia, was home early from work. Far too early. I didn’t know it then but was informed later that he was told to retire from the British company, William Jacks. Independence exacted a price. Many British companies were cutting back or closing down, so, many of our workers were made jobless, exacerbating our already bursting pool of unemployed people. Several people in our village were affected, and now so were we. Ah Tetia was not in a good mood. He was sitting on the threshold of our house and saw me before I had a chance to clean up.
“Now what have you done?” he bellowed. “Playing some stupid games with the boys again? You are 15! Can’t you act like a lady? Who would want to marry you?”
My father could go from being tender and loving into red-hot rage in minutes. On weekends when he would wake up early to cook Teochew moey or porridge for breakfast to accompany the pork rissoles his mother gave him for our family, he would tickle the soles of my feet to wake me up to eat the rice porridge. When he laughed, his face would light up with sheer joy. But unexpected enforced retirement as a bill collector before he was 55 caused him to worry about finances. He was waiting for me to reach 17 so he could marry me off. He was concerned that if nobody wanted me, I would remain his liability. Over the years, he had continually hammered into my head that I was dark, ugly and worthless. With horror, I realised that the poison had seeped into my veins and I saw myself as dark, ugly and worthless.
Kampong houses were mostly made of wood, with nipah palm thatched roofs, called attap, though some had corrugated zinc roofs. The attap, layered out in sheaves, lifted with the breeze to cool the house down, but not so the zinc roof, which became like an oven lid to trap the heat in the house, making it unbearable in the hot season. Fortunately for my family, only the kitchen part was zinc-roofed. We were grateful for small mercies.
Kampong life was largely subject to the weather. If it did not rain, our well would run dry. If it rained too much, our homes would get flooded. Drainage was a huge problem in the country, causing regular floods elsewhere besides our own village. The rivers and major canals would overflow, concealing the edge of the road and canals, so unsuspecting vehicles would drive headlong into the canals, sailing past like submerged boats, desperate passengers shouting and waving from wound-down windows to attract help. The Bukit Timah Canal, which ran from Upper Bukit Timah into the Rochor Canal, was one of the worst-hit canals in the country at such times. Besides this problem was that of filth. Utter filth. Our monsoon drains were open sewers, and our rivers and lakes were cesspools of pollution, as our population of nearly a million people emptied our human and industrial wastes into them.
I was one of the guilty parties.
We, in Kampong Potong Pasir, had acquired electricity in our houses only in 1965, shortly after our country had gained independence. This was supplied by a village generator. From our vantage point, it was mind-boggling to think of astronauts and cosmonauts going into space, when
