Return to a Sexy Island

by Neil Humphreys

  As usual, I was lost. Despite the guidance provided thoughtfully by the ghostbusters, I struggled to track down many of the island’s pioneers and sought assistance. I stumbled up a well-worn path and came across a couple of young guys examining a headstone. Wearing backpacks, hats and sensible shoes, the Chinese twenty-somethings obviously had plans for a Bukit Brown hike, a bit of an expedition to find the more famous names.

  “Excuse me, how are you managing to find all the pioneers in here?” I shouted across several crumbling graves shaded beneath the trees. “Are you following a map?”

  “No, we are just following the cards and arrows left around,” replied the taller bespectacled one. “Have you seen them?”

  “Ah, the ones left by the ghostbusters. Yeah, I’ve seen them but I can’t make sense of them.”

  “There are a few famous graves up there,” he said, pointing towards the hill’s grassy summit. “If you head that way, you can’t miss them.”

  “Thanks, guys. So what brings you here?” I asked. “It’s an unusual way to spend a Wednesday morning.”

  “We’ve been reading the papers, following the news, and wanted to see the place before they started demolishing it.”

  I pulled a street directory from my rucksack and found the bookmarked page on Bukit Brown Cemetery. I pointed to Lornie Road on the map.

  “Can you show me roughly where the proposed road is going to cut through?”

  They eyed me suspiciously.

  “Why are you so interested in Bukit Brown?” the bespectacled one asked. He did all the talking. “Where are you from?”

  “Oh, I live here and I’m writing a book about Singapore.”

  The bespectacled one stepped towards me. He did not look happy.

  “You’re from overseas,” he said firmly. “Don’t you think it’s disgraceful that a government can decide to bulldoze a cemetery and tear out our country’s history without bothering to consult the people first?”

  Well. What could I say to that? I was only trying to find Chew Boon Lay’s grave to break the news gently that the East-West MRT line no longer ended at his station.

  “You don’t think it’s any better now?” I ventured cautiously.

  “How is it any better? They are still ripping up this place. The government doesn’t listen.”

  “Listen to whom?” I wondered aloud. “Listen to the majority? Where’s their Bukit Brown protest? Is it a poor government because it doesn’t listen to people like us, or a wily, cynical, but effective, government because it knows roughly what its majority still wants: more money, decent homes, flat screen TVs, lots of Singapore Pools outlets and tuition for their children. I’ve got friends, Singaporean friends, who honestly couldn’t care less about Bukit Brown. They’ve got bills to pay so why should they care about some dead bodies.”

  “Don’t you think it’s terrible?”

  “I think it’s the same everywhere. I’ve lived in England and Australia. Some people would care about lost heritage but most would be more interested in who’s going to win The X Factor. But it’s changing in Singapore. You’re here and I’m here. All the other volunteers are here documenting the graves. The volume of letters to the papers, the blogs and websites, that is new Singapore. I don’t think there would have been so much interest in Bukit Brown 15 years ago. To me, that says new Singapore. You are new Singapore.”

  And they are, along with the volunteers I met who were painstakingly photographing the graves as they carried out three-dimensional mapping of the affected graves, with plans to record oral histories and compile them for the National Library. They came from universities, institutes, the Singapore Heritage Society and from families who have relatives buried at Bukit Brown. I chatted with a woman as she ate lunch in one of the portable offices. She asked me, pleaded with me, to write a letter to the newspapers, imploring others to back their futile bid to save Bukit Brown Cemetery. They know it is a fight they cannot win. The bulldozers are coming. Golf courses can be spared because their members’ wallets shout loudest. No one hears the pleas of the dead. Old or new, some things never change in Singapore.

  But in new Singapore, there is a growing resistance to the destruction of the country’s physical, historical markers. Public consultation is increasingly expected and demanded (so much so that after I visited, the government agreed to build a bridge over part of the fragile forest to reduce the impact on the flora and fauna). And those volunteers and field workers, numbering close to 300, are determined to record the names, histories and voices of Bukit Brown before they are silenced by the excavator, their beautiful, hand-carved headstones smashed and left in pathetic piles of rubble beside toppled trees and dead shrubbery.

  The number crunchers may dismiss such a labour-intensive exercise as naive and tokenistic, but these number crunchers are not as dominant as they once were. New Singaporeans are beginning to look beyond the mere protection of their rice bowl, they are looking ... yearning ... feeling for something more. Bulldozing parts of Bukit Brown will again offer something less. People need to feel rooted to their country, to maintain an attachment, to want to stay. National Day Parades show off big tanks and fighter jets but new Singaporeans require more than a shiny air force and new MRT lines to feel rooted to their home. They need those historical markers, the physical ties that bind them to their ancestors and their nation’s past. Bukit Brown Cemetery gives them that, a fireworks display over Marina Bay doesn’t.

  As I wandered through the cemetery’s rusty iron gates and past those appalling wooden pegs with the red-stencilled numbers again, I found myself marginally more optimistic than when I had arrived. New Singapore revealed itself in the distinct voices of those two Chinese guys. They were the voices of angry young men, amplified by the voices of the angry young women in the portable office. These young Singaporeans can no longer be dismissed as greenie crackpots, heritage zealots or disaffected rabble-rousers. They are dignified, industrious, proactive local heroes. They are my heroes. And they are growing in number. Never mind the practicality of Confucius and utilitarianism of Jeremy Bentham, Singapore’s government would do well to heed the warning of David Banner.

  Don’t make them angry. You wouldn’t like them when they’re angry. They know they have options. They can leave.

  Despite the volunteers’ positivity and persistence, I strolled off in search of something more uplifting. I found it at the end of the same road. The meandering Kheam Hock Road (named after Tan Kheam Hock, one of the cemetery’s original management committee members) guided me past laughably large private dwellings and led me to Dunearn Road, where I saw a brown sign indicating Jacob Ballas Children’s Garden. I had never heard of it. I trekked the pedestrian crossing that covers Dunearn Road, a canal and Bukit Timah Road (Hannibal spent less time crossing the Alps). I passed the sports facilities of the National University of Singapore’s Bukit Timah campus and presented myself outside the Jacob Ballas Children’s Garden.

  At the entrance, a mild-mannered NParks guy stared at me quizzically, like I had a limb missing. I did. I didn’t have a child with me. A leaflet pointed out that adults not accompanied by children must join viewing sessions at 9 a.m. or 4 p.m. daily to avoid looking like a pervert. I added the pervert bit, but the leaflet was hardly any less subtle. So I removed my dark glasses, fake moustache and raincoat and vowed to return with a child. (Call me tactless but I grow tired of the intervention of the fun police whenever children are involved. Single men and women are not automatic threats to minors, just as my desire to photograph my daughter taking her first swimming lesson does not make me a paedophile deserving of castration.)

  To be precise, two kids—my daughter and I—returned later to see what the Jacob Ballas Children’s Garden had to offer. Well, the late Ballas would have been proud. A remarkable man by just about every account, Jacob Ballas was a Jewish-Singaporean who came from a poor background. He went from selling roti, baked by his mother, on street corners to becoming the chairman of the Malaysia and Sing
apore Stock Exchange. A philanthropist beyond compare, Ballas left behind an estate worth more than $100 million, which was bequeathed to his chosen charities, when he died in 2000. Some of the money was dedicated to all the children of Singapore and was used to create a garden for kids—the first of its kind in Asia—at the northern end of Singapore Botanic Gardens. The Jacob Ballas Children’s Garden was opened in 2007.

  We loved the place and not only because it was free (although that always helps). The garden fancied itself as an interactive learning and discovery centre for children to appreciate plants, nature and the environment. In other words, a simple introduction to life sciences. There were lots of blocks to build, knobs to squeeze and plenty of water to splash. The multi-storey tree house with its furniture carved from trunks and tunnel slides was far more sophisticated than my allotment camp built in homage to Stig of the Dump. My daughter informed me that she wanted an identical three-storey tree house for Christmas. We live in a two-bedroomed apartment.

  We crossed the Indiana Jones-like rope bridge, conducted rudimentary photosynthesis experiments (i.e. we turned some handles), picnicked in the tree house, discovered that fish are deliberately added to rice paddies to control pests and that their crap makes a great fertiliser (I did not know that) and got lost in the maze. My daughter might still be running through the fountains had I not refused to join in the water revelry. A three-year-old splashing in her knickers is still socially acceptable. A 37-year-old gangly man lolloping around in his underwear isn’t.

  As we shared a bowl of cheesy fries at the kids’ cafe outside, where the miniature tables and chairs made me feel like the late Ah Meng at one of her tea parties, I thought about the dichotomy that is Kheam Hock Road. Both ends of the long and winding road represent the frustrating future direction of new Singapore. Just as the charming Jacob Ballas Children’s Garden feels so right, the demise of Bukit Brown Cemetery feels so utterly wrong.

  Fifteen

  I WAS once thrown onto train tracks. Well, when I say thrown, it was more lowered down against my will. Still, the decision to drop me beside a live rail of London Underground’s District Line as a train bound for Upminster trundled towards me came as something of a surprise. I had been about to tuck into a well-deserved Curly Wurly, my cheap chocolate treat for getting through another day at a Dagenham comprehensive school unpunished for being the class “boff job”.

  In my school, a boff job was someone of above average intelligence who refused to follow the herd. (In other words, I didn’t play truant, didn’t lock the music teacher in the cupboard and didn’t hand over my school dinner money to Caroline McHiggins in exchange for what sounded like a “boff job” behind the science bench. I always took a packed lunch.)

  The penalty for being a boff job varied from day to day. On the traumatising, infamous, autumnal afternoon in question, this boff job was sentenced by the school bully to face off against a train driver. His name was Pattern. (I’m referring to the big older kid who lowered me onto the train tracks, not the tube driver. I didn’t get close enough to read the driver’s name tag.)

  “Oi, how’s it going, Boff Job?” Pattern shouted across the platform of Becontree Station, swaggering past the graffiti-covered Cadbury’s chocolate machine that was smashed for most of my secondary school years.

  I feigned deafness and turned away. Pattern was that universally familiar school bully in the upper forms whose stock in trade was skinny first years whose academic potential threatened him because he subconsciously knew that the day would come when that same academic potential would be waiting impatiently in the supermarket queue for Pattern to bag his shopping.

  “Oh, hello, Pattern,” I mumbled into my Curly Wurly, wondering what form my public humiliation would take that day.

  “Give us your Curly Wurly,” Pattern barked.

  Ah, this was going to be a problem. He could take my freedom but he would never take my Curly Wurly. I had saved my 10p, clung onto it in my pocket all afternoon, in anticipation of a chocolate-coated, swirling caramel feast.

  “Er, no, you can’t have my Curly Wurly,” I muttered, resigning myself to my fate and hoping that Pattern had kept the glue sniffing to a minimum.

  He peeled off my school rucksack and dropped it onto the train tracks, a metre below the station platform. In normal circumstances, I might have acknowledged the creativity, the dash of flair even, but there was little time to respond as I found myself swiftly following the schoolbag’s trajectory.

  “Next time, give me your fucking Curly Wurly,” hissed Pattern, glaring down at me from the platform (I never did).

  I heard the clicking and clacking of the live rail suddenly spark into life beside my feet. Through the dusky, chilly air, I made out the train’s glowing headlights. They were getting brighter. I edged away from the live rail, grabbed my rucksack, threw it over my shoulder, shoved the Curly Wurly between my teeth and clambered up the concrete wall before rolling onto the platform as the train approached. I dusted myself down, got on the nearest carriage and nonchalantly chewed on my chocolate.

  No one fucks with my Curly Wurly.

  (A couple of weeks later, my older cousin, John Davis, otherwise known locally as The Hardest Kid in Dagenham, provided a postscript. He bumped into Pattern and threw his schoolbag over a fence. And then he threw Pattern over the fence. Do I think my cousin went too far? No, it was only a small fence.)

  Twenty-five years later, I found myself recalling my death-defying platform dangle as I stood on train tracks once more. It was strange that an Upminster-bound tube wasn’t rumbling towards me. Instead, there was a magnificent steel bridge on my left and a boarded-up brick building on my right. Other than that, I had Singapore’s new Railway Corridor all to myself.

  On 30 June 2011, the Malaysian railway operator Keretapi Tanah Melayu (KTM) ended operations at Tanjong Pagar, with Woodlands taking over as the terminus for services to and from Singapore. In an elaborate ceremony, Sultan Ibrahim Iskandar of Johor drove the last KTM train out of Tanjong Pagar Railway Station for sentimental reasons. His great grandfather had opened the Causeway in 1923. My grandfather fought in World War II but that doesn’t mean I should be let loose with a Sherman tank.

  Malaysian trains had trundled out of Tanjong Pagar since 1923, providing commuters with a surprisingly serene, short trip through Singapore’s green spine. For that very reason, the narrow strip of land has always been highly prized and highly disputed by the Causeway cousins since independence. The relocation issue was finally settled in 2010. KTM moved out of Tanjong Pagar, parcels of land were bandied about by the two countries like Monopoly board pieces, the tracks were mostly dismantled and returned to Malaysia and Singapore had a rare dilemma and an unusual decision to make. From Keppel Road in the south to the industrial tip of Kranji in the north via some of the island’s most expensive real estate in Bukit Timah, there was a lot of land to play with.

  The Railway Corridor was born.

  From the steel bridge at Bukit Timah southwards, the railway land was opened to the public in late 2011, with the URA launching a competition that called for the best ideas to develop the green link. Residents have a say in where the old track is headed in new Singapore.

  Feeling rebellious, I walked over the actual tracks along the steel bridge that crosses Bukit Timah and Dunearn roads. The little stretch of track between the bridge and Bukit Timah Railway Station is almost all that is left in Singapore so I felt duty-bound to step on the old wooden sleepers. A screeching cockatoo soared over the tracks, issuing a reminder of the dense, remote vegetation that comes with the best Bukit Timah real estate that money can buy.

  I chatted briefly with a couple of mainland Chinese guys (in new Singapore, it can be difficult to find any Singaporeans) who were photographing the old station. Built in 1915, the small brick building and its quaint waiting room triggered long-forgotten memories of standing outside the waiting room at Dagenham Heathway, a District Line tube station built less than 20 years later with a
similar no-frills red brick design. I say outside because the waiting room at Dagenham Heathway Station was usually locked, presumably to avoid vandalism, drunks and people treating the room like a men’s urinal. The waiting room was only reopened whenever a fresh coat of paint was applied, presumably for a local councillor to visit to get his picture in the Dagenham Post. The waiting room was then swiftly padlocked again, a pointless exercise because it always reeked of stale cider and urine. No such concerns for Bukit Timah Railway Station, which was officially gazetted in April 2011 and will be rightfully conserved.

  I stepped off the last of the sleepers to sample a surreal slice of equatorial jungle. I followed a strip of grass laid over the old tracks. It was between 5 and 15 metres wide and bordered on both sides by thick, tall foliage that shielded the millionaires’ mansions tucked behind. The walk around Holland Road was so unexpectedly tranquil that the plethora of possibilities for the country’s unique green corridor gave way to unhealthy cynicism. Shoeboxes are now sold as suitable homes in Singapore. Having witnessed what Pinnacle@Duxton had achieved on a relatively small parcel of land at Duxton Plain, those anorexic condos currently being passed off as luxurious abodes could fit most snugly along the Railway Corridor.

  Such an easy, lazy, myopic vision would literally hack away at Singapore’s spine, crippling its physical vitality. As I passed the Greenleaf estate, a solitary expat cyclist—the only person I encountered on the walk—gamely bounced along the boggy terrain, reinforcing the area’s potential. The Railway Corridor has the potential to be one of the finest, most accessible walking and cycling trails found in any of the world’s leading cities. Even the most laidback of cyclists could manage breakfast in Bukit Merah and a late lunch in Woodlands after a leisurely jaunt through the forest. Build it, and they will come. And they will come, in their tens of thousands. And as I passed the extravagant high-walled houses off Holland Road, where owners have paid fortunes to secure their privacy, I wondered how enamoured they really are by the prospect of a group of pot-bellied cyclists pedalling past and pondering aloud whether or not to eat the half ball being offered on Man U.