Zonked on the Void

Two zonked on the Void by the lift at Block 9 just now, the one provided with the eight or nine iron benches arranged across the tiling. A third chap might have drifted off too, while the last seemed to be holding up; it was not entirely clear from the profiles. Elderly men as usual; women sat less often in that Void, apart from the domestic helpers Sundays. There might have been some breeze tunnelling through the blocks in front; mounted fans would need to be checked later, though they were not likely. The noonday heat was overwhelming of course, but equally the confinement upstairs needed escaping. Women coped better in the pigeon holes; likely they had a lesser horror of being found dead in a corner up there. The National Heritage Board suggested the feature was a uniquely Singaporean one; the space in fact had been planned by the authorities, the urban planners, as a recreational, gathering locus. Funerals were regularly held on the Voids (not on the foreshortened like the one today); weddings less so. Trysts were taken on the Voids, for well-established couples, presumably. (The newspaper crime files commonly mentioned the other kind up on the landings of high stairwells.) Games like chess and checkers were sometimes played on the Void Decks, either on the concrete stumps, or else tables brought down from upstairs. Cats were fed and admired on the Voids, lunches & dinners sometimes taken. Foreign and local workers often spread their cardboard by the pillars on the concrete, the look of a splatter set or bomb blast invariably evoked. More often however the Void Decks stood unfilled, ghostly, slightly unnerving. For a number of years the thought had been flood concern at the bottom of the towers, or else a parking option for some future time of car ownership. The government literature, however, mentioned nothing of that. The space was a dedicated community provision, a planned and articulated amenity. It was impossible to photograph the Voids, the dimension, the scope of the emptiness, eluded the camera. In the case of the condos, their airconned communal hubs, flower beds, BBQ pits, the lighted tennis courts & pools, delivered other plans and constructions for the denizens to fit their lives. Again, it was difficult to capture the outcomes there and apprise the inspiration.