“I can’t wait. By the way, grandma, I’m not a lesbian…”
“I know that. You dressed that way to protect your soft centre…”
“I’ve never been so connected to anyone as I am to you, grandma. Please, tell me more about grandpa…”
Pansy says her farewell to Rama and Sita, and Goldie drives down the remaining part of Koh Sek Lim Road.
“All this area was ploughed fields. We had all sorts of vegetable farms. I had to ride past tall maize plants. Have you ever eaten fresh jagong, simply boiled in salted water? Ohh, they were so delicious…”
But now the road ends in a huge tarmac car park that serves the NEWater manufacturing plant to recycle waste water for drinking. Not one single attap house or field remains. There is absolutely no sign that there had been villages and a thriving community here before. Visible beyond the car park, the Bedok River flows on, though it is not accessible as it is blocked by the circular container towers. The sea is nowhere to be seen, as if magicked away. Despite being warned by Anthony, Pansy suffers a keen sense of loss.
“Somewhere behind this concrete building was where my village used to be…” Pansy says in a shattered voice. She had not expected too much. But to see no remaining trace of her life with George and her parents at all is almost tantamount to someone having wiped clean the slate of her memory. Memories that are not passed on starve and die. What about all the other villagers who had lived here? Did they pass their memories to their children and grandchildren so that their old way of life can be held in theirs? How did they cope with being dislodged from a life they loved and knew, to be rehoused in HDB flats?
“Did the villagers keep in touch with each other after they were rehoused?” Goldie asks. “Couldn’t they remain a community?”
“It was difficult in those times. To get to the one public telephone which served our village, we had to walk at least half a mile. After the villages were destroyed, people still didn’t own any telephones, and there were no mobile phones. Some people kept in touch through letters, but then many of the villagers couldn’t write. Communication was more challenging…”
“I’m sorry you can’t even see where your village was, grandma…”
“I haven’t given up yet,” says Pansy. “You know where we stopped at the heritage tree? And there are all the new supermarket and condominiums? Well, Kampong Bedok was around there and was located near the river. I think I told you that if we stood there, we would have been able to see my village across the river. And we used to cross the footbridge to get to it. Let’s go and look for that footbridge. If it still exists, it will pinpoint where Kampong Tepi Laut was located.”
“Brill!” says Goldie. “Let’s go.”
They get back to the car in a sombre mood. Pansy wants to cheer things up a bit.
“Somewhere near where the NEWater plant stands, was an old Canossian Convent retreat,” she tells Goldie. “The nuns wore white habits. All the kampong kids loved to go and watch surreptitiously when the nuns went swimming, because they swam in their full habits. When the nuns got into the water, about waist deep, the sea water would rush underneath their habits and make their clothing balloon upwards. The nuns ended up looking like white swans gracefully gliding on the waves!”
Goldie bursts out laughing, a throaty, hearty laugh. “That’s so hilarious! I can just picture them! It’s because you have such a way with words, grandma.”
“You laugh just like your grandpa. I used to love to hear him laugh.”
“So at last I know who I am, grandma, inheriting all the different genes from you and grandpa, and your parents. It’s such a comfort to know these things. I used to think that my parents took the wrong baby home from the hospital.”
Pansy proceeds to tell Goldie about the first time she had heard George laugh, on the day they met. He had recovered from the fall from his bicycle, and she had said that he looked like he was someone from a house with a flush toilet. And George had replied that he had never been defined by a flush toilet before! There! She remembers what he had said after all. Pansy knows that these days, her memory is in shreds; koyak, as they would say in Malay. But snippets do come back every now and then, though irritatingly, not always when she tries to get them to surface.
Goldie laughs even more. “Defined by a flush toilet? Wow! What fantastic use of language! I wish I had spent more time with you two.”
It heartens Pansy that part of George is already sewn into the fabric that is his granddaughter. In this way, he will never be dead. Perhaps that is why people have children, so that they can see bits of themselves reborn. Perhaps it is why parents are so afraid of their children making the mistakes they had made, suffering what they suffered. Children are the parents’ unconscious attempt to amend their lives and to grasp immortality.
When they drive past Rama and Sita, Pansy waves to her beautiful trees, calling out, “Goodbye Rama! Goodbye Sita!”
Somehow she knows she will never see them again.
“May I ask you for a favour?” Pansy asks, as Goldie drives back to Bedok Road to try to find her way to the river. “I haven’t mentioned this to your father as it hadn’t seem appropriate. I’m so glad we have this time together because I have come to know you more. You, of everyone in your family, feels so much a part of me.”
“Oh, grandma, it’s so nice of you to say that. I also feel a sense of home-coming, that at last I don’t have to wonder who I am anymore. I don’t have to be afraid to be me…”
“If you say no, I’ll understand. I will put it in my will and Anthony can do it instead. You are just so special that I feel you’re the right person to do it. I want to ask you now, before my brain becomes too befuddled and I don’t know if I am coming or going. When I die, I want to be cremated and my ashes to be scattered in Bracklesham Bay. You do remember it, right? You girls came to visit during the school holidays? I will leave enough money for expenses of course. That was where your grandfather’s ashes were scattered, near where his memorial bench sits. I’ve already reserved and paid the West Sussex County Council to have a bench erected next to his. I don’t want him to be there, all alone, on his own. You might have to pay the difference because of inflation. But I’ve included that in the expenses too. I would love for you to see England and Bracklesham Bay again. For me I would like to think that I would be side by side with George, looking out onto the sea that we both love so much…”
“Grandma, you’re not going to die any time soon! Don’t say that. suay lah!” Goldie uses the Peranakan term her grandmother had used earlier. “Maybe we can go and see Bracklesham Bay together after I return from my assignment abroad. I’m being sent to China for a few months, to do some auditing for a Singaporean company that has a branch there. Don’t worry! I understand your sentiment. But I don’t want to hear of you talking about your death. We’ve just found each other. I want more time with you. But if it will make you feel better, I will do as you ask. I promise!”
“Thank you. You’ve taken a weight off my mind. But come for tea before you go off, so that I can give you the photo of my mother. And I shall bake you a pie. I miss doing it. There’s no proper oven in this apartment. Your grandfather used to say that my pie was the most mouth-watering. I used to pick blackberries from the wild.”
Though they do not cover many physical miles in the pursuit of the old kampong, Pansy and Goldie cover many emotional miles as they exchange portions of their lives with each other. It is late afternoon when their car meanders through the various roads in the new housing estate of condominiums and smart three-storey town houses. But they cannot find the way to the river, ending up in blind corners and cul-de-sacs. The coconut, mango, papaya and cherry trees are all gone now. There is no evidence left that this was once a sprawling Malay kampong with muddy lorongs and attap houses, whose doors and windows were always thrown open, the houses by the river propped up on stilts, like the ones by the sea.
The place is quiet, no sounds of happy chatter or laughter, no
resident visible, unlike the old days when people spent many hours outdoors, working and milling around as a community. The modern residents are locked inside their gated houses and high concrete walls. Goldie finally gives up her faith in the GPS and has to stop the car to ask someone how she can get close to Sungei Bedok. The GPS is a useful tool when it works, but it has its failings. When we rely too much on technology, we lose our own innate navigational wisdom.
“You can’t drive right up to the river,” says the young Indian woman in her running shorts and sleeveless T-shirt, her mobile phone strapped to her upper arm, her headband catching drops of perspiration. “You have to park along the road here and go through that gap between the walls of the houses there. That will take you to the Park Connector, which runs alongside the river. The footbridge that you’re looking for is at the end of the Connector, before it turns back to Upper East Coast Road. It is near the Laguna Golf Course. You can’t miss it. There’s only one footbridge in these parts.”
“Yes, I remember Anthony mentioning a golf course.”
Goldie parks the car where there is no yellow line. Pansy takes out the packets of bunga rampay to carry with her. The gap between the houses is a paved pathway, softened by overhanging pink bougainvillea and fragrant jasmine. The moment they step out onto the Park Connector, the scent of salt and wet earth hits Pansy’s nostrils, evoking her youth. Metal railings border the river now, which is at full tide, the water fresh and swift moving. Across is the NEWater plant that they had been to earlier, great round towers of steel next to a modern building.
The Park Connector is designed for walkers, joggers and cyclists; beds of flowering shrubs like the bright yellow allamanda and red ixora are interspersed along the edges of the track to make it look less utilitarian. Several Malay folk are standing by their fishing rods, boxes of worms and shrimps waiting to be hooked, buckets of water by their side, ready to put their catch into. One or two of them even set up tents for their wives and children to sit, rest or snack, whilst the men fish.
“Apa khabar?” Pansy greets a youngish man in Malay, with a smile. “What kind of fish can you catch here these days?”
“Oh, various kinds,” he answers in an amicable manner. “Ikan selar, ikan pari… mackerel, stingray…”
“My father was a fisherman,” Pansy says, and the man looks at her curiously, as if she doesn’t look like a fisherman’s daughter. “In the old days when the kampongs used to be here…”
“My grandparents used to live in Kampong Padang Terbakar…”
“The words translate as ‘field-that-caught-fire village’,” Pansy explains to Goldie.
“Maybe you might remember them,” the young man continues. “Razak and Fauziah?”
The names are nondescript and do not bring up any images for Pansy.
“My memory sudah koyak,” Pansy confesses in part English and part Malay. “I’m sorry. I might have known them but I can’t remember now…”
“Don’t worry, aunty.”
The loss of memory is also the shredding of one’s history. Yet, swathes of the past do return to Pansy. She remembers the times when she had squatted next to her mother to scale pail loads of fish with a steel brush, making scraping sounds, the brittle scales flying out in all directions, sometimes into their faces. Then they had gutted the fish and steamed them right away, to make the Teochew salted fish. How her hands used to smell of fish for a long while afterwards, until she learnt to wash them properly with lime juice, then with water that had been infused with the fragrant bunga rampay! They even bathed with the flower-infused water to get rid of the smell. At other times, her mother would bathe her with the infusion of seven flowers, if she had a fever, or to get rid of other infections or bad luck.
“There it is!” Goldie’s excited voice brings her back. “Grandma! The footbridge!”
And so it is. The metal railings stop just at the edge of the footbridge. A short flight of steps leads to it. Beyond it is a tall green fence that opens out to a view of the artificially created grassy mounds and hillocks of the new golf course. But it is the location of the footbridge that Pansy knew, though now it is no longer wooden but a solid concrete bridge, with protected sides. When it was first installed so many years ago, it was only a log from the tall trunk of the Changi tree, which was hazardous to cross. How she had feared falling into the river when she crossed the bridge as a child! Even after a more sophisticated bridge of wooden slats had been built, she was still fearful. The footbridge didn’t have any sides and had great gaps between the slats that showed the river underneath. The water moving rapidly under the bridge had sometimes made her dizzy. Even one missed footing would have meant falling into the water.
Look ahead, her father’s reassuring voice came back to her, his strong hand clasping hers tightly. Always look ahead so that you look beyond the fear.
Pansy stops in the middle of the bridge to take in the new view, distorted beyond recognition or repair. The sea should have been near this. Goldie whips out her mobile phone to take pictures. The river rushes underneath them on both sides, and yet they cannot see it pouring into the sea. The sea had been moved! The wind caresses their faces; the salt is strong in the air. This feels like home, Pansy thinks. When she is too far away from the sea, she feels as if she has been thrust into a barren desert sans the smell of salt and fish.
When she finds her voice, she says, “Directly opposite was Kampong Padang Terbakar. That’s where the young man says his grandparents were from…”
“Let’s see what’s there now,” suggests Goldie.
They climb down the short flight of stairs on the opposite side and walk along the narrow path beside the river, through the tall lallang. This is obviously not an area where people walk and so it has been left wild. But soon, they are barred from further exploration by some wire fencing and a notice that says ‘Private Property’, followed by the name of the golf course. Pansy notices a small stream running alongside the property.
“Why, this must be the remains of Sungei Ketapang!” Pansy says. “Your father did mention that the two rivers have been diverted. It never used to pour into Sungei Bedok. It used to run all the way, directly to the sea. That’s why their positions looked confusing to me. So this golf course must be where the sea used to be. All along the former coast was a long beach of fine, white sand where the kampongs of attap houses on stilts used to stand. Further up towards Changi had been Kampong Mata Ikan. And around here, this would be where my village used to be, Kampong Tepi Laut, ‘village by the sea’…”
But there is no trace of it now. No one would know that a thriving village had once been here, a community of folks living and working happily with each other. Her voice trails off. Pansy feels that the past has already slipped away from her. The ache hits the stomach like a physical fist. She almost doubles over. Goldie comes closer and puts her arms round her grandmother, but does not intrude with supercilious sympathy.
Some mourning has to be borne on one’s own.
“It’s time to let go,” Pansy says after she recovers. “My ghost has been laid. Come, let’s go back to the spot where the wire fencing is, on the grassy side, so that we won’t be disturbed. Malays and Peranakans have the custom of spreading petals of flowers on tombs, rather than laying bouquets. So let us scatter the bunga rampay into the river in tribute to the lost villages and lost lives…”
Pansy and Goldie kneel on the grassy bank of the river and open the packets of bunga rampay, their fragrance rushing up to meet them. Pansy clutches a handful, bends over the river and releases the varied coloured petals into it. The swiftly moving water spreads and scatters them, the colours breaking up and moving with the tide. Goldie follows suit.
“May this be a floral tribute to the courage of the villagers… May my father and my mother, and all the villagers who have passed on rest in peace… May the scent of the bunga rampay convey them to their spiritual abode. Om Shanti, Shanti, Shanti. Om, Peace, Peace, Peace,” Pansy chants.
&
nbsp; Not knowing what to say, but feeling she has to say something, Goldie says, “May the Force be with you.”
“It is done,” Pansy says, getting back up on her feet with difficulty, feeling somewhat drained. For a few seconds, the world around her shimmers in incandescent light.
Goldie rushes to help her grandmother up. Her sixth sense tells her that she is to be the new bearer of the old history. She has the task of keeping the story alive for hers and future generations. Without history, there is no foundation to build our future.
“Will you tell me what happened, grandma?” Goldie asks gently. “I get the feeling that you have a lot more to share…”
“I noticed that there were several stone benches on the other side of the river,” Pansy says in a frayed voice. “Let us go and sit there. You are right, there’s more to tell. I guess it will be good for your generation to know what took place. It is your history after all.
“I shall never forget the day that the bulldozers came to flatten our village. It was the same day that my mother, your great-grandmother, died so tragically.
“If you don’t mind, sit quietly and don’t interrupt till I finish. Otherwise I don’t think that I will have the strength to go through with telling you all that happened…”
Chapter 9
“It was in the early 1970s when we were told we had to move from where we had grown up and had lived all of our lives. It was not just us around the Bedok area, but also further afield towards Changi Point, where many other kampongs like ours existed, including Kampong Ayer Gemuruh and Kampong Mata Ikan. Here the eponymous red cliffs of Tanah Merah had overlooked the wide, open sea, free from the huge hulks of steel that plied the international waters, which were further away. The large houses, called bungalows, were more posh than our attap hut on stilts, as they were built for British officers as their seaside holiday homes, with names borrowed from English coastal towns, like Plymouth and Newquay. You know how the English love to name their houses. Even Singapore’s first Chief Minister, David Marshall, had a home in the area. I believe he called his Tumasek, though I can’t be absolutely sure about it since my memory is so koyak now.
When a Flower Dies Page 17