Moringa—the last number of months Nance had been drinking a medicinal tea made from the leaves, she thought. There had been a lot of recent hype about it seemingly. (Next morning one of the lads at Al-Azhar suggested a narcotic effect was received from moringa.) The example here stood about three metres tall. Sour sop was sighted for the first time here, another small tree; in the sorbet form it made one of Nance’s favourite desserts, with sugar or a dash of honey added to combat the tartness. The No Monkey Tree might have been one of the jests posted on signs throughout the farm, if it had not been for a number of repetitions of the same at the base of these impressive trees. Monkeys could not climb those trunks perhaps because of the sharp nodules over the surface, which was something like the outer casing of the durian, a tree that oddly seemed not to be represented in this farm. It had taken eight years in the region for the first sighting of the ginger plant, the bulging root exposed at the base of some of the potted stalks in the examples here. Oodles of bananas were represented in numerous varieties on the farm, including some particular black kind, a label indicated. A small pond near the resto held within the fringe of reeds what could only have been loudly croaking frogs, though given the locale one would have been forgiven for thinking amplified recorded nature. (By the outdoor eating area there was a plaster B/W heifer cropping the grass at its feet. In some of the open fields of Singapore awaiting development more playfully cartoonish figures of the same kind featured, the urban planners entirely unconscious of the twisted irony in this concrete jungle they had created.) Ivy Singh who was the spiritual force behind this farm at Kranji was by no means any kind of typical Singaporean, certainly not of the contemporary form—which was most clearly apparent in the sign near the entry that suggested an equivalence between politicians and terrorists. An old sign it seemed this that dated a couple of decades back at least. You Cannot Serve Both GOD & MONEY was another risqué sign here in this turbo-capitalist republic that remunerated its leaders so handsomely. Ivy lived on the farm with a Chinese husband; her surname suggesting a Sikh heritage perhaps partly explained her strongly independent cast of mind. One of Ivy’s Bangladeshi workers testified that the woman was a fine sort, good-hearted at bottom; and that made everything easier for himself and the other workers, the man said. (A tough lady you got the impression, as the farm itself suggested. This was no pretty, decorous affair of flowers & herbs created with photographing tourists in mind.) Our Kashmiri Tufail had some decent Bengali from an extended stay in Calcutta in younger days, where his father had kept a shop for many years. There was no time to take notes, the extensive unfolding of this secret garden in the far west of Singapore did not allow it. A lake full of water lilies they must have been was happened upon all of a sudden behind a stand of greenery. Like the explorers of undiscovered country, the three of us lads came to an immediate halt before the sight. (Attacked by mosquitoes, Nance our driver had retreated to the car.) The flower petals of a banana, at least one of the varieties, revealed itself after a few minutes of standing before a particular tree—just out of reach three metres from the ground, dull crimson colour in three or four long, elongated spears. Three or four days before the flower that had been sheathed might have come into full bloom. The farm and the garden was the work of a lifetime, the product of true passion and calling. Many of the people in Singapore did not know of its existence. Koels and other birds had discovered the quarter. A small pigeon first made its appearance by the lunch table; later it was found along the paths and within the greenery. It was not the same as the common pigeon, Sameer the other Kashmiri had rightly suggested. Sameer had read some Robert Fisk, knew of Chris Hedges and Noam Chomsky. He needed time to absorb what he had seen at the farm, he said over a Winston at the end of the tour. After a long campaign the Singaporean authorities had finally managed to get their Botanical Gardens on the World Heritage list; few of the technocrats would venture out to lunch at the “Poison Ivy” restaurant at Kranji.
Bollywood Veggie Farm, Singapore
Great piece
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