Old School Revisited

‘I must be getting old’ I said to an old schoolmate from my primary school days. ‘And sentimental and grumpy” he retorted. ‘Next you’ll be complaining that the sky was always blue, the hawker food tasted different and children plenty’. And so it was. Well I mean to say, we had less distraction in those days. Look at the lorongs now, not a child in it. I remember when every lorong would have been swamped black with children. ‘Even towards the last day of school holiday! The kids are at tuition centre or enrichment classes ‘he interrupted me scornfully as I gazed forlornly into a deserted lorong. ‘Maybe you are right’, I admitted reluctantly but rather than trying to pacify a proud Singaporean and to avoid another debate later. And as if I do not know the pressure the parents put on their offspring to perform well and all that goes with it. I was deeply concerned by the thought of the children’s inflicted inability to allow them to participate in simple pleasures associated with childhood.

‘There’s our old primary school if we turn left’ he said, as we walked along Sims Avenue. I turned into Lorong 23. I stopped and stared as I entered the old school gate of Geylang Primary School. The old school building with the grey asbestos roof still stood the test of time. On my right, behind the security fencing, a new warehouse structure was rising on the school field, where many ‘hantam bola’ games or rounders were played during recess time and being chased and fleeing gleefully with a torn shirt after avoiding being caught in a police and robber game. I noticed the century old Angsana tree at the corner was gone. It had a trunk which was partly blown by a bomb when the school was bombarded to the ground by the Japanese during the World War Two. Occasionally, a makeshift altar would appear at the base of its huge buttressed trunk to commemorate the tree not as a war survivor but most likely as a shrine by some illegal 4-D or chap gi kee winners to appease the spirit that many believed was living there. Ghost stories told at school lavatory and re-enacted in classroom with nightmarish result especially little did we know that Angsana tree bled a blood coloured resin when the bark was bruised or slashed.

But what have they done to my old school? Since then, of course, it has now become a centre of various welfare and charity organisations for housing the aged to rehabilitation of ex-prisoners. Well, at least it has been temporary reprieved and remained as an occasional remnant of the past for many an exile like me.

Geylang sipaku Geylang

Geylang, sipaku Geylang, Geylang, si rama rama.
Pulang, marilah pulang, marilah pulang bersama-sama.
Mari pulang, marilah pulang, marilah pulang bersama-sama.

Lyrics from a Malay Folk Song.

Translation:

Geylang, sipaku Geylang, Geylang, si rama rama.
Home, come home, come home together.
Come home, come home, come home together.

Every balek kampung or home coming trip I have taken since I left Singapore nearly four decades ago, has always being a nostalgic journey to my past. My recent visit to my island home was no different except it was a double whammy. I was back to attend the 135th Anniversary of my alma mater and visited the house where I was born. Although my old house is insignificant and beyond any comparison to my former school, which holds a rightful claim of having three past presidents of Singapore as its former students, I could hardly hide my thrill to learn that it is under the preservation and heritage listing like my old school building. In this ever changing and land hungry city, not many Singaporeans can boast about of having their old house and old school to be protected from the demolishing hands of the city planners.
Early one hazy morning, last month I took a crowded MRT train packed with workers and students which stopped at every station to allow more passengers to join the morning rush. I travelled along the East- West line, passing stations with familiar sounding names like Bedok, Eunos and Paya Lebar in the direction of the city. As the train passed Joo Chiat and heading towards Aljunied, I had not been along this way in a good while but now on impulse, I decided to venture into the area, curious to see for myself, how much the district had changed at hands of planners as well as the influx of new migrants and residents, especially from China. So instead of continuing my journey to the city, I alighted from the train at Aljunied Station and I strolled towards Geylang Road.
I stopped and stared at the now empty space in front of the Aljunied Station. Just an empty space, but memories came flooding back. Gone was the Lorong 25 Market. It was a hub of the open air and wet market era, where the housewives, hawkers, fruits and vegetables sellers came to congregate, hustle and bustle every morning.
Here’s Geylang, I used to live, spending an uneventful childhood playing marbles, flying layangs(kites), fighting spiders and Siamese fish, sprinkled with occasional forays against the Lorong 27 kids who were foolhardly enough to venture into our territory. It appeared to me at that time our street gang had a fearsome reputation, though I suppose that by today’s standards we were not really at all fearsome. At the very most, we only had to explain or lied to our teachers or mother what caused the black eye or the tear at the back of our shirt was due to a game of catching at the school yard.
Bear with me, if I am rumbling like an old uncle for the next few postings but I promise to share some of the signature street hawkers recipes that I have collected during this balek kampong trip.

A Tale of Two Cities

About half a century ago, as a young child, I would listened to my maternal grandmother reminisced about her own journey back (balek kampung)to China. She talked about how she endured the month long journey on the Chinese junk boat that plied along the coast of Vietnam, the reassuring sight of the dense forest in the distant shoreline until seasickness overcame all on board when they sailed into the eye of the monsoonal storm that would whip waves "that rose hundred of feet" in the South China Sea.I do not know how many times she had made her journey home. But who would blame her, except her branch of relatives in her own village, for not making the obligatory journey home as a frequent happening during her lifetime.
Today,that same route would take you across to any part of Southern China from Singapore, on a regional airplane in a matter of hours.
It kept striking me since my last balek kampung that if I compared my feeling to those earlier immigrants in Singapore. I might not be surprised to find the same sentiment running in their hearts.
Homesickness is a part of it, but something more seems to resonate." Do you feel at home in Singapore or Sydney?" I was asked almost by everyone I met and I answered them in almost precisely the same way. I like to returning to my old country to search for my ancestral home, my old schools and places that still cradle my dreams, stroll along Geylang and Chinatown, reassured by the familiar sounding names of the streets and the facades of buildings, that Singapore was my island home after all.
But everything in the old country had changed. I felt crowded, disoriented even after the pain of assimilation and some reinforcement of my besieged identification in the first couple of days after arriving in Singapore. Even the food tasted wrong!

And it wasn't until the plane bringing me back to Sydney,and through the porthole windows, I glimpsed the orange terracotta roofs, the bridge and the opera house that I finally understood Sydney was after all, my one true home.

Balek Kampung

As I stepped onto the travelator leading to the immigration checkpoint with other passengers from a 7hrs flight from Sydney, I wonder what three decades of working and living away from Singapore have done to me. How will I feel to be back home again, even though the last "balek kampung" was only 11 months ago. I am back again this time, to attend a nephew's wedding. What if I have to ask this embarrassing question at the family gathering, "Who are your parents?" in order to know whom they belong to my siblings.
I am still familiar with the hot humid air that greeted me when I left the air-conditioned airport terminal building to board a taxi; and the unmistakable Singlish spoken in the queue; so is the aromatic smell of the local food that wafted through the hawker stalls adjacent to the wet market, on the next day.
But much has changed in the 30 odd years, I come to realize that most of me remembered only the dream-like visions of the past I grew up in, and the nostalgic feelings of the bygone days of my childhood, half remembered, half imagined still come to the surface, despite the ever changing skyline of modern Singapore. To be continued...
P/S:
If you post a comment in my blog, please post it in the latest posting even if it refers to my previous posting. I have lost some of your comments as I have difficulty finding them. Cheers.