Internal Tourism in Singapore

An unexpected visit from Rina put the trip to Woodlands back until early afternoon. Usually Rina and her friends head out to the Indonesian Embassy for Hari Raya. At the last minute this year the decision was made for City Plaza, a picnic on the grass beside the river, or if that was crowded by the Paya Lebar MRT, where there was tenting. We had little time either side, but still enough for Rina's racy story of her pretty sister Rani's first weeks in Singapore. A delay in her work visa and crowding at the Maid Hostel meant Rani, the sister, was in store for a fortnight's sleeping rough. Instead a rescue by a white guy met at a midnight bus-stop where she had planned to bed-down had Rani at the Marriott Hotel, five star luxury, food, gifts and money laid on. Just like Sis, landing on her feet, Rina laughed.
         Zainuddin had provided precise details for the trip: up/down escalators at the two MRTs, left/right, the particular Roads and Drives. Before the first bus-stop however a halt was made in the progress. The matching bright azure-blue outfits of the approaching pair had somehow passed without notice. Here was another chance meeting with young Raden and his recent bride. Early in Ramadan Raden and his wife were met at the Arab Community iftar—break-of-fast—put on for the poor and needy. On that occasion Raden and his bank colleagues had hosted two large tables of boy-orphans; as well as the feast and the enveloped hangpao from the Arab Community, the bank employees’ union provided gifts for each of the lads. Some years before Raden and his group had been out to Sri Lanka aiding the relief effort after the tsunami. Here for the festive occasion the young pair was found in fine new tailored cloth, truly radiant. In this instance it was the peacock outshining the hen with a cummerbund in glittering earth tones that hung like an apron below the knees. Such high operatic costuming for the streets was not uncommon in Geylang even for lesser occasions. What was remarkable here was for an outsider to be drawn so closely into the procession—something like stepping into an exotic and fabulous historical epic of the screen. Warm greetings, best wishes and promises to catch-up soon. Raden's mother lived in one of the Haig Road towers, where the celebratory feast awaited the pair. On entry the son and daughter-in-law would go down on their knees before the old woman to ask for forgiveness for any sin or error they may have committed over the previous twelvemonth. (According to Zainuddin the elder ought thereafter respond in similar kind, as he himself did with his two boys on this day—another instance of Zainuddin's idiosyncratic standpoint following something of the Prophet's practice in his personal household a millennium and half ago that he had read about.)
        Woodlands stands on the opposite side of the island from Geylang Serai, in the north-west corner immediately before the Causeway to Malaysia. Someone had said recently that the highest cab charge in Singapore could not exceed $35. One could walk across the island in under three hours. Cabs would have been difficult to catch on such a day, when, as would be proved at Zainuddin's, many Chinese had invitations to the festival of their compatriots.  
         The train on the Circle Line had not been taken previously; the prospect of some sight-seeing from the window was in store. The line taken a few months ago to Jurong in the middle-west had shown a slightly shabby Singapore, housing towers in need of a lick of paint, schools that would have stood low in the rankings and passengers on the bus likewise in the meritocratic stakes. That was the bad-lands of Jurong, where large industrial estates were sited, including, whispers suggested, military production that made up a fair proportion of Singapore's manufacturing. This Circle Line, and then the second from Bishan, put on show the more eerie, commonly lampooned, picture-postcard display of Singapore's perfect order and cleanliness. Not a hair or blade of grass out of place, award winning pavement beautification, air-brushed litterlessness. A command urban planning order executed that had descended like a Papal bull, no objections countenanced. A chap could only sit and stare through the glass. Cream and pastel-blue blocks stretching into the clouds in Zainuddin's particular quarter; tree and bush plantings under the regime of the most severe and meticulous gardening supervision; kerbside plantings again like Toy-land. Up over the Causeway a short distance the Malaysians had built a Lego-land tourist feature that would draw these people from Woodlands and Singapore generally. The newspapers commonly carried photographs of new housing estate launches in model form on a table, around which politicians and developers smiled and peered. Here was the realization on the ground—infamous model-Switzerland and Germany on the equator minus Moo-cows and Alsatians.
         Wherever one looked the same looming voids pasted over by design touches. A couple of parcels of forested land had been passed prior to the Admiralty stop, one cut by a bicycle track; a reservoir holding a great deal of water too. Even these more or less natural features seemed neutered. Included in Zainuddin's careful directions was notice of what he called a handsome foyer for his particular block, Number such-and-such. Each Block carried giant numbers that would have been visible from jet-liners.  Entering at Zainuddin's the immediate reference was the antiseptic interior of a hospital. The reflective steel in the lifts high-lighted skin-pores and blemishes. Inserting  Zainuddin and his food-spotted shirts, his sockless shoe-wear, concentrated seer's visage into this environment was difficult. Zainuddin had told the story of his recourse a few years ago when he needed to dispose of some books from his shelves for which he had no further use. The lift. Stacked in the corner; press Ground. We had laughed appreciatively at the table; here in the actual setting the mirth turned sour.
         One recalled the old dyed lairs in their cowboy shirts and cow-horn belt-buckles, their out-sized and multiple rings and flat-caps; their gold-dripping made-up dames that congregated in Geylang Serai; the scrounging Batam gals, the homeless, the shiftless, the beggars and cripples—how vital and indispensable they all were to a healthy, sane community. Little wonder Zainuddin and the other suits and starched shirts needed to take flight from their pigeon-holes and linger at Geylang, even the tame lower end. 
         A surprise inside the flat was the perfect order achieved within too. One had under-estimated the influence of Zaiton—Olive, Zainuddin's wife. Every writer ought to have a fit and meet help-mate of the calibre of Zaiton. Were she able to perform reliable secretarial services, perfect heaven! An independent-minded rebel author who has spoken truth-to-power in Singapore on numerous occasions—whose autobiography is titled The Singaporean Fundamentalist—found here in feather-bed luxury such as the early Sultans would have jealously envied. Where were the books? Zainuddin was never without a book in his voluminous lady's handbag, either to promote to a friend, or else for the long train journeys. The matter could not be pursued on such an occasion.
         A fine collection of people gathered. One old Hokkien neighbour who had recently foisted a broken-winged bird on Zainuddin. This chap too was an independent-minded Free-thinker, more than half-inclined to Mao and very much anti-PAP (the long-serving Sing' government—the day following would mark both National Day and forty-eight years of unbroken single party rule in the Republic of Singapore). Don't mention Lee Kwan Yue, Zainuddin mock-warned during the course. Another jack-in-the-box was a Trinidadian lawyer settled almost twenty years, who on free days liked to ride the buses to far-flung corners of the island where she documented discoveries with a camera. The woman's home island was five, or eight times larger than her adopted, she revealed; but with a third of the population. Even after many years the woman seemed to be searching in her new home for something she could not find. That was how it appeared. A pleasant woman, with a husband committed to the locally famous church in Novena. (The locale out there had been named after the popular church.) Here at the table too for the Hari Raya feast were other Chinese neighbours of Zainuddin and Zaiton's. Each Chinese New Year this pair came down to the sixth floor to cook the celebratory meal for sharing with their neighbours (thereby knocking on the head any question of pork). Woodlands clearly contained better and richer prospects than one would guess from its exterior.
         The large table for eight meant shifts for lunch, perhaps more than a dozen over the course of the day. Once Zaiton's extended family left the non-Muslims were very much in the majority—a testament to Zainuddin's ecumenicalism. Doubtful anywhere else in Singapore one would find such a weighting on this particular calendar event.
          A highlight on the return journey bookended the day. The holiday had the trains especially crowded. It was a real holiday, even the construction sites had closed. Many of the sites ran 24 hours under flood-lighting, with perhaps no more than three or four complete shut-downs a year. (Even on Hari Raya not all had in fact taken the holiday. An outfit on Orchard Road beside Dhoby Ghaut MRT laboured on in the tea-brown mud behind improvised high screens.)
         In middle Geylang later on the return the China boys were prominent; on the trains the Bangla and Indian. During the first brief visit to Singapore five years ago a local, Nancy Ong, had suggested Little India on a Sunday evening in order to observe the recreation of the Indian construction workers. Singaporeans were known to come out to Little India on a Sunday as tourists on their own patch for the spectacle on display among these foreign workers. Nance and her friends had been out to Little India on a Sunday a number of times for no other reason than to take in the sights on the streets, in the gutters and across the grassy waste-ground that awaited development. A good many Singaporeans made the same trip out for the same reason, Nance assured.
         On the train from Admiralty—the nearest station to Zainuddin's digs at Woodlands—not all the passengers could reach a handle or rail, let alone find a seat. Quite a number clung to friends and family in order to keep their feet. What the young Indian spivs in their bright, clean and colourful attire arranged in this circumstance was something above and beyond the usual recourse. Within the entryway of the carriage two or three found access to some kind of fixture. The remaining seven or eight in the group created a chain of links in three separate clusters around the central post. Lads took their fellows over the shoulder, others stood with fingers entwined, waists girdled, affectionate head-locks that produced whispers and almost lovers' nibbles of ears. Commuters averted their eyes, pretending not to notice. The locals were easy to differentiate by posture alone. None looked in the direction of the chain, at the elephant in the carriage. A nattering drunk peeing in a corner might have attracted such pointed disregard in a Western city. The lads rocked lightly against each other riding the turns and jolts comfortably. Boy and girl pairings ought to have felt deepest shame by comparison. Beyond the pretense, all within the carriages certainly understood their own poverty of feeling by comparison. It was unavoidable. The homo-erotic element was undeniable; if there was some it was underlying, not the substantial element. In corners of the globe, far flung dirty patches without sewerage or running water, humanity lived another life. Clean, modern, orderly Singapore presented the extreme counter-case. Therefore the local internal tourism of Nancy Ong, her friends and all the others on a tiny pin-prick island forty-five kilometres in breadth.
        At Bras Basah—Wet Rice (in Bahasa) once upon a time—the No. 7 bus happened along first. An early supper was in order after the light lunch. From Guillemard on the No. 7 one could cut through to middle Geylang Road and Tasvee for a first teh; from there onto an Aljunied vegetarian supper. All the Eateries at Geylang Serai had closed for the holiday; the favourites would not re-open for more than a week. The fortunate Muslim foreign workers had returned to their families for the great event, Sarawak, Sumatra, Java, Johor Bahru, Chennai and Dhakka.