Kampong Spirit

by Josephine Chia

  Most of the houses by the sea were made of concrete and were magnificent. They were big bungalows on concrete plinths, with stone stairs that led down towards the sandy beach. Like the terraced houses in Joo Chiat, the houses had ornate decorative designs and were in colours that were typically Peranakan – pinks, turquoise-blues and greens, so much so that some of the houses looked like iced celebration cakes. They made the whole area seem cheery and friendly. The terraced shop-houses were on two floors and sold all sorts of Peranakan food, ingredients and wares. Mak was in her element. Her face brightened tremendously.

  “We must buy some stangee,” she said. “And some bunga rampai.”

  Stangee is incense that is made from an aromatic wood, and bunga rampai refers to a potpourri of the petals of various flowers and shredded pandan leaves, mixed with essential oils. Both are the Peranakans’ ways of keeping their homes smelling sweet and fragrant. Mak was in a celebratory mood and definitely feeling rich. Otherwise such luxuries were usually considered an extravagance.

  At the corner of a row of shophouses, my mother treated me to traditional nonya laksa, noodles cooked in thick spicy coconut milk. We ate it with a spoon as it was the kampong way, though some people were beginning to adopt the Chinese way of using chopsticks.

  At Joo Chiat, she trawled me through fabric shops and stalls in the market. She fingered numerous bolts of voile material. She was a skilful seamstress and could sew her own kebaya, though she would bring the completed kebaya back here to a specialist to ketok lobang. The latter was a row of fine holes, lobang in Malay, that were punctured into the fabric and they ran from the shoulder to the hem of the kebaya. They had no practical function but looked pretty. Either my mother or I would jait sulam, that is, embroider flowers and birds along the edges of the kebaya. It was a time-consuming process, so homemade kebayas tended to have just a simple row of embroidery. The more elaborate the embroidery was, the more valued the kebaya was deemed to be, as if it was a proof of the wealth of the people, who could afford to pay others to do it.

  Finally she found a turquoise-blue fabric. She knew my father liked the colour on her. She found a batik sarong which had a pattern and colour which matched. We went home laden with our purchases, which included gula Melaka and flour for making the kuih baulu, kuih tart and kuih belanda, serai, lengkuas and daun limau perut, for the various sambals and curries. She was making all the various delicacies not just for our family but to distribute to the neighbours as well. My mother always put others first. But it was also a kampong tradition – the households celebrating their New Year would share their largess with close neighbours. This meant that we all joined in the celebration of the different races’ New Years, which created a very convivial atmosphere in our neighbourhood.

  On this Chinese New Year, Mak surprised me by giving me a small pair of hooped gold earrings, which was such an extravagance. She must have got her senoman or tontine money, the scheme of saving money along with a group of people that villagers bought into.

  “This is your Rabbit Year, so it’s a special gift.” She said. “By the time your next Rabbit Year comes, who knows where I will be.”

  One of the delights of the Chinese New Year celebrations was the firing of red fire-crackers. If you laid your ears to the ground as I did when I slept on a mattress on the floor, the distant sound of the fire-crackers exploding was like the stampede of buffaloes. The Chinese fired crackers to scare the devils away from their homes. Because the fire-crackers were red and the colour was auspicious, when they splintered, they sent showers of red paper into the air, bringing good fortune into our lives. These were never swept away during the days of celebration. Besides, sweeping the floor on the first days of the New Year was considered bad luck, as it meant sweeping away good fortune from the home. The other delight was playing with bunga-api or flower-fire. These were thin wires of fireworks that were not explosive- they merely sizzled, and when we waved them around in the dark they created delightful trails of bright light.

  On February 15, there was another cause for celebration in the country.

  Television made its debut appearance. The thought of being able to view films in one’s home was a revolutionary idea. There was excitement in the air. A broadcasting station was set up and it was called TV Singapura.

  My father took my mother, my two younger sisters and me to the inaugural telecast outside Victoria Memorial Hall. We went in a lorry together with other villagers from our kampong, which included Ah Gu, Krishnan and his family, Pak Osman, Karim, Abu, Fatima and their parents, and also Rajah and Salleh, my father’s weight-lifting mates. I managed to get a space for Parvathi, though her mother did not come. Wooden planks were placed across the back of the lorry and we used these as seats. As there was no back support, if the driver went too fast, we would sway dangerously, so we had to hold onto the planks tightly. But we had a jolly ride, Karim entertaining us with his guitar and songs, which we joined in when we knew the words.

  “Long distance looking. That’s what tele-vision means,” Krishnan showed off his knowledge.

  Of course, important people were invited to be inside Victoria Memorial Hall. We were told that there were seventeen television sets in the hall. We were standing outside, where a marquee had been erected to protect the sets that were placed outdoors for us. There were hundreds of people. Everyone jostled and craned their necks to look. It was not easy for me to see anything. My father carried one of my younger sisters on his shoulders and Ah Gu carried the other.

  “What about me? What about me?” I cried.

  Parvathi was taller than me so she had no difficulty in peering over heads and shoulders. I really did not want to miss out on the historic moment. Karim took pity on me and hauled me up onto his shoulders, and when my elder brothers turned up later, they swapped over.

  The TV was switched on and a clock appeared in black-and-white.

  Everyone applauded and shouted, “Hurray!”

  The hands of the clock ticked towards six o’clock. Our eyes were riveted on the clock as if it was a hypnotist’s instrument. Then the clock faded and the Singapore flag appeared, but without colour, to the accompaniment of Majulah Singapura, the song composed by Encik Zubir Said, which was performed in public for the first time in that very hall. Everyone stood to attention and sang.

  It was an emotional moment. Come August, we would be singing a different national anthem.

  Culture Minister S. Rajaratnam appeared on screen and said in English, “Tonight might well mark the start of a social and cultural revolution in our lives.”

  He was followed by a documentary programme, TV looks at Singapura. This was followed by a cartoon feature, then a newsreel and a comedy. We were so engrossed, we did not realise the passing of time. Before the telecast ended, four announcers spoke in the four official languages to give a summary of the next day’s programme. The whole thing lasted for an hour and forty minutes.

  Of course, most people could not afford to buy a television. Certainly not many in our village could spend money that was meant to buy food. The Culture Ministry knew that the average citizen was not flush with wealth, so it proposed that bars, coffee-shops and restaurants should install TV sets for their customers. Transmission began with only one hour per day, but slowly the hours increased to four. People congregated at public eateries in the evening, where there was a TV set. The kids in our village acted as spies, and kept on the look-out to see which coffee shop or neighbour had bought a TV set, so that we could steal a view.

  On my birthday in March, my father, who had never given me any presents before, surprised me by giving me one. It was a ten-cent stamp with a picture of a blue kingfisher, one of my favourite birds, on it. The thought went through my mind that it was a strange present.

  “This is our new stamp which has just been issued,” he said proudly. “Look! There is no queen’s head on it anymore. From this month, all our stamps will feature local orchids, birds and fishes.”

  The light bul
b went on in my head. Ahhh! Another historic moment. It was not just about stamps. The change might seem insignificant but it was actually a huge step that marked the onward progress of our nation.

  Television impacted our lives in a way we had never dreamed possible. Just as libraries, books and Rediffusion opened up new worlds to us, TV took us there on a daily basis. Up until then, the only newsreels we saw were at the cinema in Pathe News, which were screened before the cartoon and main feature. So if we did not go to see a film, the only reports we received were from the radio and newspapers. Now far-off places were brought into our living rooms – at least for those who could afford a television set.

  When Prime Minster Lee Kuan Yew came home from London in July after successful constitutional negotiations regarding Singapore’s status within Malaysia, we could actually see the smiles and share in his triumph. It was due to this new medium that we could see Dr Martin Luther King deliver his speech to 250,000 people in Washington, USA, on August 28, starting with the words that became iconic, “I have a dream...”.

  “Merdeka! Merdeka!”

  The shouts echoed across the country when Malaysia finally became a reality. What we had hoped and dreamed of for years was finally realised. We felt an emotional charge for our country, and a sense of identity was forged. Sadly, our neighbour Brunei had opted out of the union. So our new nation was formed of Malaya, Sarawak, Sabah and ourselves. This great occasion was marked with a new flag.

  There was rejoicing but there was also an increase in tension.

  This was the beginning of an infection that spread. For some reason, some Malays began to believe that Singapore joining Malaysia was only for the improvement of the ethnic Chinese community, so the worm of tension grew between the two races. Luckily for us, in our kampong we separated political ideology from personal relationships. But in kampongs like Geylang Serai, people who had once looked upon the other as a brotherly neighbour now looked at people of different facial features and colour with suspicion. Having lived peacefully with each other for years, people now became aware of others as different. The rot had started.

  On September 7 we saw a telecast that unsettled us. In Jakarta, Indonesia, Anti-Malaysia rioters burned down the British Embassy. And on September 24 two bombs went off in Singapore, then another in October, all in the Katong area. An innocent girl was killed near Jalan Eunos in another blast. People were thrown into a state of unease and questions arose: Why was this happening now, when we had achieved our country’s dream for independence? Why should our countries’ merger cause others to be so angry? What harm was this merger doing to them? Was the bombing the work of Anti-Malaysia saboteurs or a mad bomber? What were they trying to achieve?

  In many ways, when we didn’t have television, the horror of an incident was not brought home to us so tangibly. But now the sight of moving images with all their sound and fury made it hard to escape the drama and pain of the people engaged in conflict. Technology was both a gift and a curse. One of the most terrible scenes to witness on television was the assassination of U.S. President John F. Kennedy on November 22 that year. Though he was not our leader, through films and now television, we had come to regard him as a charismatic, popular president. On the small screen, we saw the presidential motorcade come into view, with the president in an open-topped car, his wife beside him. Huge crowds thronged the streets of Dallas. President Kennedy was waving, his face beaming with a big smile, his forelock sweeping across his brow. Then, in the next moment, three shots rang out, and the president slumped sideways into his wife’s lap. No one had registered what had taken place. The motorcade was still moving. Even Jackie Kennedy did not realise what had happened. She was nonplussed. Then, when realisation hit her, her face registered her anguish. Chaos reigned. And though we only saw it in black and white, we thought we saw the redness of his blood as it spattered on her face, hands, suit, and in her lap. The horror was indelibly etched in our minds. No one could have seen that scene and forgotten it. In May 1961, President Kennedy had vocalised his dream to Congress, of seeing the U.S.A. put a man on the moon. He would not see his dream fructify now.

  Another horror lay in store for us – this time much closer to home.

  The fifth bomb blast of the year occurred in December in Sennett Estate, the residential estate across Upper Serangoon Road directly opposite us in Kampong Potong Pasir. Someone threw the bomb across a rooftop. The bomb exploded. We all ran out of our houses when we heard the explosion.

  “Sounds like war again,” Pak Osman said.

  The older folks knew what had caused the explosion but we youngsters did not. The loud noise was scary. Luckily the bomb had skidded off and exploded in the garden, so no one was hurt. Still, it was a manifestation of the unrest that had begun. Our dream to be an independent country was not without its dark side.

  Of course we did not know that this was only the beginning of more strife.

  IT SHOULD BE lovely when a girl approaches her seventeenth year. She would be in the bloom of youth – standing on the threshold of womanhood. It should be. But it wasn’t so for Parvathi. In many ways Parvathi’s beauty was her downfall. Her father used it to lure suitors, and convinced them that he did not need to pay any of them a hefty dowry. It didn’t matter to him if the suitor was fat or thin, or too old and ugly for his beautiful daughter. He was only concerned with getting rid of her.

  Parvathi came to me weeping.

  “What can I do? What can I do?” She moaned.

  She was my best friend. Her whole life had been one of deprivation. The floor of her family hut was mud-packed, their possessions meagre. Parvathi had no education, no prospects in life except to marry well. We had a childhood pact – if our fathers forced us to marry, we would run away. We had sealed our agreement with our saliva, spitting a pearl-drop into each other’s palms, then mixing and rubbing our palms together. Her father and mine had threatened us with this fate ever since we reached puberty. This Damocles sword hung over us. Women who were free to choose who they married would not understand the fear and horror that crippled us. I was four years younger than she was, so my father had not made any plans yet. But Parvathi’s father had. He was always drunk and he had other wives and children, and came home to Parvathi’s mother only when he desired her. Plus he needed money to feed his drinking habit, and was not opposed to being a pimp to his own daughter.

  “This time my father is really serious. The man he has found is a widower with three young children. The man is marrying to provide a nursemaid for his kids! He is so old! Forty plus. He works as a butcher. Half his face had been damaged by some acid, so the skin is all scrunched up like wrinkled leather.”

  I tried to imagine being married to a man like that, and felt repulsed. Not just because of his looks but because we would have nothing in common. I’d rather die. But I did not say any of this to Parvathi. My heart contracted painfully for her.

  “How I am dying to be free...”

  “I’ll run away with you,” I said, though not very convincingly.

  I did not want to hurt my mother. But a pact had to honoured.

  “No!” Parvathi said. “I won’t let you. I’ll set you free from our pact. You’re educated. Your mother has sacrificed so much to put you through school. You need to finish school and do well to make her feel it has been worth it. This is not your battle. It’s mine. I also want you to succeed – for me. It’s vital for me to know that a kampong girl can make good and change her circumstances. Promise me!”

  “I promise. I promise that I’ll try my hardest to succeed, for you, for my mother, for myself. I will live my life in the best way possible, do the things you and my mother could not do...”

  But she was not through.

  “Promise me that you will live your life as a free person. You will fight against anyone who tries to oppress you. If you treasure freedom and live your life like that, know that you are making me happy wherever I may be...”

  “Are you going to run away on y
our own then?”

  “I’m thinking of it. But I don’t know how my mother is going to survive if I go. All that I earned from the paper factory is given to her. She needs the money to buy the medicine for my brother. Yet I want to lead my own life too. But I’m good for nothing. How will I manage...?”

  “You’re not good for nothing,” I said, far too strongly. “You’re a clever, loving person. Good fortune is just not on your side. When I finish school and get a job, I will help you. I promise. Look, I’ve saved the money I got from selling the comics. You can have it all. Mak gave me a pair of gold earrings last year. You can pawn or sell them.”

  “Oh, Phine...” She said, her voice charged with emotion.

  Then she reached out and hugged me, her long hair draping over my shoulders. She was taller than me so I felt small in her arms. We were twinned in despair. I was sad and angry at the same time. An uneducated kampong girl seemed so powerless. Parvathi’s warm body shook with sobs. I too wept. I did not know then that it was going to be our last embrace.

  “I wanna hold your hand, I wanna hold your hand,” Karim sang.

  He was our kampong boy who had made good. For years his musical talent lay hidden as he went about doing his smelly job of clearing the buckets from the village out-houses. But encouraged by fellow villagers and Pak Osman in particular, who recognised his gift, he found a gig that gave him his first opportunity. Then he ended up playing professionally in a band at the cabaret at Great World on Kim Seng Road.