Singapore Swing

by John Malathronas

  In the end, Raffles was promoted downwards. He was sent as lieutenant governor to Bencoolen, by far the least fashionable and most pestilential of the Asian settlements – even its position at the rear end of Sumatra lends itself be dubbed as the ‘arsehole of the archipelago’. Before Raffles left, he handed a memorandum to the chairman of the board, George Canning, the later Foreign Secretary and future prime minister. In its pages Raffles was advocating a new colony on one of those islands he had passed on the way to invading Java at the tip of the Malay peninsula. Canning agreed and authorised him to check the Dutch influence in the region. What exactly the unwritten terms were is still a matter of contention, yet Raffles was clear: ‘I left England under the full impression that I was not only Lieutenant-Governor of Bencoolen but in fact Political Agent for the Malay States.’ But then, he would say that, wouldn’t he?

  Before he left, Raffles married again and took his second wife, Sophia – descended from good, landed Irish stock – to Sumatra where he made his other big discovery after Borobudur. During one of his expeditions to the interior, he came across the largest flower on earth that now bears his name: Rafflesia. But this was not one to collect for a posy to Sophia. This plant blooms only once every ten years or so, with a flower a yard across and a nectary that can hold a gallon and a half. Furthermore, it smells strongly of decomposing carrion to attract pollinating flies. What with the durians and all, the aromatically-challenged Indonesian rainforest must be hell for sniffer dogs.

  I cross Elgin Bridge to the north side of the river, dominated by the Padang, a grassy emptiness of a sports ground for rugby and cricket. This must be the most expensive field in the world, standing as it is on a prime development site. Hey, isn’t this the city where everything has its price? But no, Singapore needs the Padang because the memory of Empire and descent from Raffles is the historical glue that holds its disparate communities together. Sometimes one must be thankful for petty patriotism, manufactured or not; it may be the last refuge of the scoundrel, but it also acts as a scarecrow to the sly land speculator. Maybe the Buddha was mistaken: there are some things that money is not allowed to buy, even in Singapore.

  A small pavilion housing the Singapore Cricket Club is dwarfed by the soaring Raffles City skytowers behind it. The rugby goalposts are zoned in such a way that Jonny Wilkinson could score a conversion across the road straight into the Supreme Court cupola. This was the last of the great neoclassical colonial buildings, completed in 1939, right at the twilight of the Empire. Japanese propagandists criticising British imperialism liked to point out that the Supreme Court and Changi Prison were the finest buildings in all Malaya. They were not far off the mark: the Supreme Court is an elegant, domed building with a beautiful triangular pediment, The Allegory of Justice, standing on six Corinthian columns.

  The Corinthian motif continues next door at City Hall, with its long, colonnaded portico. Its dramatic entrance at the top of a long flight of steps lends itself to occasion and it is no surprise that it is in this building that the biggest events in Singapore’s history have taken place. This is where Lord Mountbatten accepted the Japanese surrender in 1945 and where Singapore was granted self-government in 1959. More poignantly it is here where it finally broke off from Malaysia on 9 August 1965, Singapore’s National Day. At the time, no one thought that a city with no hinterland, not enough water, no agriculture and no factories could be a viable state. In retrospect, this was all bunk from backward-looking analysts who had fetishised manufacturing and heavy industry. Singapore made its income from trade and services and attracted investment by being a model of efficient administration in an area where having both hands on the till is as natural as having noodles with your lunch.

  I take a picture of Raffles’ statue in Singapore that stands tall outside the Victoria Theatre on the other side of the Supreme Court. His arms are folded like a master engineer surveying a greenfield site. He looks much older than his portrait with a thin, resolute face, a receding hairline, and a commanding erect poise. He is dwarfed by the clock tower rising behind him on top of the theatre, over a double series of Italianate windows. No one but me stops by the statue or pauses to admire the building itself.

  If the East India Company directors thought that Raffles’ ardour would suffocate in the fetid backwater of Sumatra they couldn’t have been more wrong. The first thing he did was to emancipate the slaves in Bencoolen against the wishes of the Honourable Company. The board were indignant: why should a commercial enterprise be in the vanguard of this new morality? Would they now have to pay those slaves for working? What a dent in the profits that would make!

  But the real preoccupation of Raffles was with the Dutch who were set on expanding their influence, claiming every cove and cape for themselves and putting pressure on the sultanates not to engage in commerce with the British. Something had to be done and, in 1818, Hastings invited his Bencoolen governor to Calcutta where they met for the first time. They got on well in person, but the Governor General was a stickler for procedure: before Raffles made any move, London had to be consulted. Raffles knew that the company board and the British government were wary of antagonising the Dutch. Despite this, he managed to convince a reluctant Hastings to provide him with troops from Penang in order to found a settlement, ideally on the Riau Islands to the south of Singapore. Hastings insisted though, that if the Dutch had already established an outpost, Raffles was to avoid any conflict.

  When Raffles arrived in Penang he heard the bad news from Governor Bannerman: the Dutch had claimed the Riau Islands, anticipating the British move. Bannerman, who disliked Raffles immensely, and even more so his proposition that a competitor colony be established, refused to lend him any troops. Raffles couldn’t wait, as things were unfolding rapidly – well, for 1818 – so he tricked the Penang governor into sending a convoy to the South Seas, which is how South East Asia is generally known throughout the area, ostensibly to reconnoitre the territory. The assembled fleet left but, on Raffles’ instruction, anchored out of sight of the port until he set sail to meet them clandestinely. Once aboard the Indiana, commandeered by Captain James Pearl, Raffles cheekily dispatched a message to Bannerman alleging that, ultimately, ‘he thought better to direct the reconnaissance in person’. By the way, it was this same captain who in 1822 purchased a plantation on the hill that bears his name today, and it is that same hill that has passed on his name to the Pearl Centre by Outram Park, with its plethora of mobile phone shops and the sex shop that isn’t.

  The convoy made a beeline for Singapore, where Raffles landed at 4 p.m. on what is now North Boat Quay – about a hundred yards up from the site he surveys from the forecourt of the Victoria Theatre. A second statue and a small plaque, yellowed by damp, commemorate the occasion:

  On this historic site Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles first landed in Singapore on 28 January 1819 and with genius and perception changed the destiny of Singapore from an obscure fishing village to a great seaport and modern metropolis.

  Raffles’ action was a coup in many respects. His ideas were revolutionary and their reverberations are still felt today. Singapore was a free-port-to-be where no customs duty would be levied. Situated bang in the middle of the route from India to China, among money-grabbing authoritarian sultanates and monopolistic Dutch administrations, Singapore’s laissezfaire radiance became a beacon for entrepreneurs.

  It was also a more conventional coup, because Raffles manipulated a complicated political situation to his advantage. The throne of the sultanate of Johore-Riau was in dispute: the old sultan, Mahmud Shah III, had died leaving two sons, the elder of whom, Hussein, was by right his successor. However, he was abroad when the Sultan died, so Hussein’s younger brother ascended the throne. The pragmatic Dutch had come to terms with the status quo and supported the usurper. But then came Raffles who recognised the exiled first-born as the rightful heir. During a meeting on the island of Penyengat, he provided Hussein with protection guarantees against outside interference. Hussei
n – who must have thought he was dreaming – quickly agreed. Raffles also closed a deal with the Temenggong, the local warlord – and real ruler of the island – who paid tribute to the Sultan and without whose cooperation any deal with Hussein was pointless. In return for protection and a pension, they granted the East India Company full settlement and administration rights. Even in 1819, the fortunes of the island and mainland Malaya had started to diverge.

  Raffles’ latitude far extended anything London or Calcutta had authorised. He knew the dangers well: that the Dutch might attack Singapore; that the Sultan of Johore might try to trounce his brother once and for all; that the company board might accuse him of subordination; and that the British government would be furious. His action was a gigantic bluff: in this victorious, post-Napoleonic climate, he simply didn’t think anyone would dare rise against Britain.

  - 5 -

  There’s English and there’s Singlish – and there are signs to remind me of the way the old imperial language has been adapted to the magical world of the East; there be dragons and there be new words: ‘leisureplex’ and ‘merlion’ hit me within two minutes of each other. A sign by a building site uses the impersonal passive: ‘Inconvenience caused is regretted’. No one here regrets anything in the active voice for that would mean losing face.

  There’s ‘Wellness’ now in front of me in this New Age Singlish. It is a large reflexology centre with a smiling Chinese woman in a doctor’s white apron touting for business. She looks at my arm and the sling and waves me in. I follow her call, admiring the wa of the ambience where innocuous pastels of beech beige and pomegranate pink predominate. The spacious chamber looks mostly empty even though there are half a dozen clients being, no, not massaged, but rejuvenated, revitalised, reinvigorated. Slow synth music soothes the subconscious: did Brian Eno ever cut a record Music for Spas?

  My host, who introduces herself as Lillian, gives me a price menu. She is silent, because talking and haggling disturbs the Tao of Therapy. She points at my shoulder suggesting a massage, but my tendons need time to mend and fuse. I vacillate between an ear-candling session, which ‘restores neural functions as it allows the oxygen to travel through the cleaned passageways of the ears and enter the brain’, and a reflexology session which is really a foot massage. Reasoning that my grey cells have already been smoked to extinction by various chemicals, I opt for half an hour of the latter. Lillian finds her voice and finally speaks with only the faintest hint of disapproval: ‘We advise forty minutes.’

  I check. It’s ten dollars more. I smile and say no, trying to match her detached, polite manner. It’s easy; I know how to refuse.

  I lie on a reclining armchair and take off my sandals. I close my eyes while Lillian washes and talcums my feet in a ritual as old as submissiveness itself. When she rests them on a small cushion and starts pinching my toe tips, I enter metatarsal heaven: ‘This little piggy went to market/this little piggy stayed home.’ She pinches every toe following its contour and pressing hard against the phalange bones. ‘This little piggy had roast beef/this little piggy had none.’ I’m secretly afraid I might start giggling, since I’m very ticklish, but I needn’t have worried.

  ‘This little piggy cried wee, wee, wee, all the way home!’

  ‘OUCH!’ I scream.

  Lillian smiles angelically. She points at my nose. ‘Sinus,’ she says, or rather I guess. And yes, I suffer from bouts of rhinitis. I tell myself that this New Age nonsense is in reality Old Age nonsense, having been part of Chinese medicine for thousands of years.

  I sneeze violently. ‘Slow on the nose bit,’ I blurt out.

  She points at the open window. ‘No nose,’ she says. ‘Dust from construction.’

  As if to underline her sentence, the merciless sound of a drill fills the room with un-Enoesque unpleasantry, and twenty Chinese collectively wince at this sudden breaking of harmony in the ether. My masseuse looks up outraged and walks to the only woman not dressed in a medical apron who fans herself by the till. They talk sotto voce and the woman disappears through an inside door. She reappears with a wrestler build-alike and leads him hurriedly through the exit. I wouldn’t like to be in the drill operator’s flip-flops when they meet him.

  Lillian makes a move mid-foot and I jump.

  ‘Shoulder,’ she says and points at my sling.

  As she works her way in a small semicircle, starting between the fourth and fifth toe and ending at the edge of my foot’s arch, I feel pins and needles on my two rotator tendons. The bottom of my heel hurts a bit. I look at the explanatory leaflet – it is my sciatic nerve. ‘Bad posture?’ Lillian offers in return. And so on to eyes, brain, lymphs, kidneys, pancreas – all my insides are being stroked through my soles. Dammit, if this really is working, I can’t wait till she reaches the penis reflex.

  The drill stops and everyone breathes in. The wrestler and the till woman return and smile at the patients. Well, she does; he grunts. We can now distinguish those sustained synth notes again. Not that there was any chord change since the drill started, mind you.

  I close my eyes and enter a dream state of pleasure. There is the odd pain here and there, which never goes above four out of ten, but it disappears under Lillian’s considered pummelling. The muscles above my cuneiforms hurt particularly badly. They correspond to my lungs and my chest and yes, I have the odd allergic wheeze. I take a deep breath in the wet, Singaporean weather as Eno changes two chords dramatically in the space of ten seconds. I surrender to the comforting, sonic warble, for this is what ambient muzak demands: total passivity. This is music for meditation to offload your brain: don’t try any knee-jerk tap against the beat. (What beat?) Don’t follow melodic lines – they don’t exist. This is minimalist musical nirvana and in the circumstances it’s perfect; I like its hypnotic rumble, though I’d never download the MP3.

  Lillian has now finished one foot and is massaging my calf to half way below the knee; then she bursts out laughing. I feel awkward and so does she because she stands up until her throaty chortle subsides. Then she sits down again and starts symmetrically on the toes of the other. But then she stops as if she’d forgotten something, picks up both my feet and raises them.

  ‘You feel this lighter?’ she asks and points at the foot she’s been working on. I do and tell her so. She starts laughing again, this time uncontrollably. I bet she’s discovered something embarrassing about me. I try to remember: when was the last time I checked myself at the clinic?

  Lillian catches my eye and beams like an enlightened bodhisattva. Such a strange job, massaging people’s feet. Does she enjoy it? Would she rather be a proper nurse? Does she get paid enough? Why did she laugh before? I look at her smiling eyes whose sole purpose are to keep me relaxed and I can’t tell. It is not that oriental expressions are inscrutable. It is that orientals try not to break the mutual harmony by allowing you to scrute them.

  Raffles left Singapore on 7 February 1819, having founded in ten days one of the most important British colonies, and returned to Penang to confront a fuming Bannerman who had heard the astonishing news. Soon after, an official Dutch protest arrived: since Johore was a dependency of Malacca and Singapore belonged to Johore, Singapore was obviously Dutch.

  It was then that Raffles knew his bluff had paid off: the mere fact that the Dutch were protesting diplomatically and had not gone to capture the British outpost straight away was excellent news. Nowhere more so than among the expat box-wallahs of Calcutta. Money talks and in this case it crowed dithyrambically about the opportunities opened up by the founding of a British port halfway between Canton and Calcutta. Hastings was astonished at the audacity of the manoeuvre but took note of the commercial reaction in India. He wrote a cagey letter, on one hand praising Raffles’ initiative and confirming the engagement with the ‘legitimate’ heir to the throne, but at the same time regretting the measure itself since it might incur a collision with the Dutch. He also wrote a flaming missive to Bannerman ordering him to send troops immediately.


  Raffles returned to Singapore on 31 May 1819. In less than four months, the fishing village had become a small town of 5,000 people who had moved to this tax haven. Raffles and his friend, William Farquhar, who had been left behind to oversee the settlement’s development, roughly delineated the various neighbourhoods of the city: to this day they remain the same. The secure north side of the river was to be the government and European settlement – this is where today we find the City Hall, the Victoria Theatre, the Padang and the Christian churches. Further north, where Sultan Hussein and his court resided, would emerge as the Muslim area, still very much alive today. The south side of the river would be left to the Chinese whose junks could find shelter inside the river mouth in the North and South Boat Quays; since the cargo was being unloaded there, the commercial area was established in what nowadays is termed the Central Business District (CBD). The only hill in view would be the army headquarters, Fort Canning, in use until World War Two. The locals still had the memory of Forbidden Hill and were afraid to climb it, until Farquhar fired off a huge cannon from the top and announced that he had dispersed the ghosts. The dispersal was terminal: as I approach the river by Coleman Bridge and look at the bottom of the hill, I notice that the spring where the Raja’s harem used to bathe has metamorphosed into the River Valley Swimming Pool. Nice touch.

  Raffles wasn’t to return to the colony he established until three years later. When he disembarked at Singapore on 10 October 1822, the population had risen to 10,000 souls and the value of its trade was greater than Penang and Malacca put together. But the more the colony flourished, the more Raffles was being chastised by life: he received an official rebuke from the company and the court as the legal status of Singapore was still the subject of Anglo-Dutch negotiations; he fell out with Farquhar and sacked him; his supporter in Calcutta, Hastings, retired under a cloud, accused of malversation; and his royal friend and ally, Princess Charlotte, died during childbirth. Closer to home and to the heart, Raffles’ employers extracted their revenge by proxy: his three children succumbed to the treacherous climate of Bencoolen and Raffles himself started having a series of strong headaches we now suspect to have been the beginnings of a brain tumour.