An unexpected visit from Rina put the trip to Woodlands back until early afternoon. Usually Rina and her friends headed 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; just 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 was in for a fortnight's sleeping rough. Instead, rescued by a white guy met at a midnight bus-stop where she had planned to bed-down, the gal finds herself a place 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 azure-blue outfits of the approaching pair had somehow passed without notice. 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 young male 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.
For the festive occasion the young pair was found in fine new tailored cloth, truly radiant. In this case the peacock outshining the hen with a cummerbund in glittering earth tones that hung like an apron below the knees.
Such operatic costuming for the streets was not uncommon in Geylang, even for lesser occasions. What was remarkable here was the outsider being drawn closely into the procession, something like stepping into an exotic historical epic of the screen.
Warm greetings, best wishes and promises to catchup. Raden's mother lived in one of the Haig 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 year. (According to Zainuddin, the elder ought respond in the same kind, as he himself did with his two boys on the day.)
Woodlands was on the opposite side of the island from Geylang Serai, in the north-west corner by the Causeway to Malaysia. The train on the Circle Line had not been taken previously; the prospect of some sight-seeing from the window was in store. A trip a few months before to Jurong in the mid-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. The badlands of Jurong, where large industrial estates were found, including, whispers suggested, military production that made up a proportion of SG’s manufacturing.
The Circle Line, then the other train from Bishan, showed the commonly lampooned picture-postcard Singapore of order and cleanliness. Not a 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. You 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 meticulous gardening supervision; kerbside plantings again like toyland. Up over the Causeway the Malaysians had built a Legoland tourist feature that would draw the people from Woodlands and wider Singapore.
The newspapers often carried photographs of housing estate launches in model form, politicians and construction heads gathered round. Here at Woodlands stood the realisation—a Swiss dream on the Equator, minus cow-dotted hills.
Wherever one looked the same voids appeared, pasted over by design flourishes. 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 large body of water; even the more or less natural features seemed concocted.
Included in Zainuddin's careful directions was what he called a handsome foyer for his particular block. Number such-and-such. Each block carried their numbers that would be visible from jetliners, let alone rescue helicopters.
Entering at Zainuddin's the immediate sense was of hospital order and spareness. Floors and walls gleaming; reflective steel in the lifts showing skin-pores and blemishes.
Inserting Zainuddin and his food-spotted shirts, his sockless shoe-wear, concentrated seer's visage, into the surrounds was far from easy.
Zainuddin had told the story of his recourse a few years ago when he needed to dispose of some books from his shelves. The lift. Stacked in the corner. Ground button.
We had laughed at the table.
One recalled the old dyed sharp lads in their cowboy shirts and buckles, their out-sized rings and flat-caps; gold-dripping made-up ladies that congregated in Geylang Serai; the scrounging Batam gals, the homeless, the shiftless, the beggars and cripples. How vital they all were to a healthy, sane community.
Small wonder Zainuddin and the other suits and starched shirts needed to take flight from their pigeon-holes for Geylang, even the tame, lower end of the quarter.
A surprise inside the flat was the perfect order there too. Zaiton—Olive, Zainuddin's wife—had been underestimated.
Every writer deserved a help-mate of the calibre. With Zaiton’s accomplished secretarial services, perfect heaven!
An independent-minded, rebel author who had spoken truth-to-power in Singapore on numerous occasions—whose autobiography was titled The Singaporean Fundamentalist—found here in feather-bed luxury such as the early Sultans would have 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.
An impressive gathering. One old Hokkien neighbour who had recently foisted a broken-winged bird on Zainuddin. The chap too was an independent-minded Free-thinker, more than half-inclined to Mao and very much anti-PAP. (The following day would mark both National Day and forty-eight years of unbroken, single party rule in the Republic.)
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 with her 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 so many years, the lady seemed to be searching in her new home for something she could not find. With her husband the pair worshipped at the locally famous church in Novena.
At table for the feast were other Chinese neighbours of Zainuddin and Zaiton. Each Chinese New Year the pair came down to the sixth floor to cook the celebratory meal for their neighbours. (Thus perhaps overcoming any possible suspicion of pork.)
Woodlands held better and richer prospects than one would guess from the 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 clearly in the majority—a testament to Zainuddin's ecumenicalism.
A highlight on the return journey bookended the day.
The holiday had the trains crowded. It was a real holiday—even the construction sites had closed. Many of the sites ran 24/7 under lighting, with no more than three or four 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 in the tea-brown mud behind 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 before, Nancy Ong had suggested Little India on a Sunday, in order to observe the recreation of the Indian construction workers.
For the spectacle on display among these foreigners Singaporeans were known to come out on a Sunday as tourists on their own patch. Nance and her friends had been out to Little India Sundays a number of times to take in the sights on the streets, in the gutters and across the grassy patches that awaited development. Many Singaporeans made the same trip 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 was something beyond the common recourse.
Within the entryway of the carriage two or three found themselves some kind of fixture. The remaining seven or eight in the group created a chain 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 included 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 show. A drunk peeing in a corner might have attracted this pointed disregard in a Western city.
The lads rocked lightly against one another, comfortably riding the turns and jolts.
Boy and girl pairings would have felt shame by comparison. Despite the pretence, all within the carriage understood the matter. Unavoidably.
The homo-erotic element was undeniable; if there was some it was not the core.
In corners of the globe, far flung dirty patches without sewerage or running water, humanity lived otherwise. Clean, modern, orderly Singapore presented the other side.
At Bras Basah—wet rice in Bahasa, once upon a time—the No. 7 bus happened along. An early supper was needed after the light lunch. From Guillemard aboard the 7 one could cut through to middle Geylang Road and Tasvee for the, from where an Aljunied vegetarian supper. The Eateries at G. 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 celebration—Sumatra, Java, Johor Bahru, Chennai and Dhakka.
Singapore 2011-2020
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