Someday, someone had to do something about this awful mess.
After emptying the tambui, I had the unenviable task of cleaning out the chamber pot with well-water, with my bare hands. We had no long-handled brush. It was always at this juncture that I would recall the words of one of my heroes, African-American Baptist Minister and civil rights activist, Martin Luther King, Jr. He had delivered his famous speech in March 1963 in Washington, when he had organised non-violent protests against racial discrimination. His speech began with “I have a dream…”
“I have a dream, I have a dream…” I chanted.
Mostly to tell myself that I will not die like this, in this state of utter deprivation.
I yearned to live a life where there was always enough to eat, a life of luxury and adventures. Like the Famous Five children in Enid Blyton’s novels, which I was introduced to by scavenging the rubbish bins of the English at the hill above our village, which we called Atas Bukit. However, Elder and Second Brothers had started working, so I no longer needed to raid any rubbish bins for food anymore, though we had done so for years. Besides, the British were in the process of moving out after our independence and the houses at Atas Bukit were taken over by our PWD, to manage the sewage works further along the road. But food was still not plentiful.
My cousin George had once taken nine-year-old me to the red-brick National Library on Stamford Road, which had opened in 1960. It nearly cost me my life, as my father had punished me for going out with a boy. I never saw George after that incident. These days, I no longer had to depend on books and magazines discarded by the English. Ever since I could read, I devoured books, reading them at night by the light of the carbide and kerosene lamps, until we got electricity. Still, the electricity was rationed and was turned off at 9pm. From then, it was back to carbide and kerosene lamps or torchlight under my thin blanket, because the whole family slept in one room, and I couldn’t disturb the others, though I slept on the floor in the living/dining area.
The majority of people spoke Malay and Hokkien in those times, and the word “kampong” was a Malay one. Although the farmers tilling the land close to the banks of the Kallang River were mainly Chinese, my family lived in the Malay part of the kampong, where people did not raise any pigs, unlike in the Chinese settlements.
To walk to school, I had to pass Bidadari, the Christian cemetery, although there was a Muslim section further up the road near Braddell Road. I also had to walk past the delightful park, Alkaff Gardens. The gardens comprised small hillocks enclosing a beautiful lake set amongst verdant forest, where we swam and picnicked, and people who had boats used to sail in them. Local film companies like Shaw Brothers and Cathay-Keris shot their films here, some with my idol, the dashing Malay actor P. Ramlee. It used to be one of the greatest moments whenever he arrived on the film set. But in 1964, just after the formation of Malaysia, P. Ramlee had returned to his roots. There was also an exodus of Malay neighbours from our village, who went to live in Peninsular Malaysia when the separation of our countries took place in 1965. The impact of our political divorce was felt even at the grassroot level. We had relatives on both sides of the causeway. Families were torn apart. Earlier in that year, Premier Tunku Abdul Rahman, who had a major role first in the merger of Malaysia, and later, in our subsequent separation, made the announcement that he was giving up the reins and would be succeeded by Tun Abdul Razak in Malaysia. In Indonesia, Suharto had become president.
“Tima,” I said excitedly to Fatima, who was the same age as me. I clasped her hands and twirled her around with glee. “Singapore has just got its first female judge, Miss Jenny Lau Buong Bee. See! See! I told you! These are changing times. Women are no longer just breeding mares!”
Over the years, I had shared such announcements every time a woman was appointed to a senior position somewhere in the world; the first female prime minister, the first doctor, et cetera, so that girls in my village could live in the hope that women would not be relegated to menial tasks, jobs and positions all their lives. But Fatima was not impressed; she dropped my hands.
“But I don’t have study what. I only weave wicker baskets at our rattan factory. How can I be anything but a breeding mare?” she asked. “Like Parvathi’s father, my father wants to marry me off at 16 or 17…”
The fate of a girl was still in the hands of fathers and elder brothers.
“My father says it too,” I reminded her. “But remember when I read that Enid Blyton book, Five Run Away Together, to you? We’d said we’d run away before our fathers forced us to marry?”
“Then why didn’t Parvathi run away? Why did she have to kill herself?”
Our old wound bled still. Parvathi was never far from our minds, but we found it too painful to speak of her suicide which took place in 1964. Yet her ghost lived with us. We had been a threesome since a tender age, and her spirit
