IT SHOULD BE lovely when a girl approaches her seventeenth year. She would be in the bloom of youth – standing on the threshold of womanhood. It should be. But it wasn’t so for Parvathi. In many ways Parvathi’s beauty was her downfall. Her father used it to lure suitors, and convinced them that he did not need to pay any of them a hefty dowry. It didn’t matter to him if the suitor was fat or thin, or too old and ugly for his beautiful daughter. He was only concerned with getting rid of her.

Parvathi came to me weeping.

“What can I do? What can I do?” She moaned.

She was my best friend. Her whole life had been one of deprivation. The floor of her family hut was mud-packed, their possessions meagre. Parvathi had no education, no prospects in life except to marry well. We had a childhood pact – if our fathers forced us to marry, we would run away. We had sealed our agreement with our saliva, spitting a pearl-drop into each other’s palms, then mixing and rubbing our palms together. Her father and mine had threatened us with this fate ever since we reached puberty. This Damocles sword hung over us. Women who were free to choose who they married would not understand the fear and horror that crippled us. I was four years younger than she was, so my father had not made any plans yet. But Parvathi’s father had. He was always drunk and he had other wives and children, and came home to Parvathi’s mother only when he desired her. Plus he needed money to feed his drinking habit, and was not opposed to being a pimp to his own daughter.

“This time my father is really serious. The man he has found is a widower with three young children. The man is marrying to provide a nursemaid for his kids! He is so old! Forty plus. He works as a butcher. Half his face had been damaged by some acid, so the skin is all scrunched up like wrinkled leather.”

I tried to imagine being married to a man like that, and felt repulsed. Not just because of his looks but because we would have nothing in common. I’d rather die. But I did not say any of this to Parvathi. My heart contracted painfully for her.

“How I am dying to be free...”

“I’ll run away with you,” I said, though not very convincingly.

I did not want to hurt my mother. But a pact had to honoured.

“No!” Parvathi said. “I won’t let you. I’ll set you free from our pact. You’re educated. Your mother has sacrificed so much to put you through school. You need to finish school and do well to make her feel it has been worth it. This is not your battle. It’s mine. I also want you to succeed – for me. It’s vital for me to know that a kampong girl can make good and change her circumstances. Promise me!”

“I promise. I promise that I’ll try my hardest to succeed, for you, for my mother, for myself. I will live my life in the best way possible, do the things you and my mother could not do...”

But she was not through.

“Promise me that you will live your life as a free person. You will fight against anyone who tries to oppress you. If you treasure freedom and live your life like that, know that you are making me happy wherever I may be...”

“Are you going to run away on your own then?”

“I’m thinking of it. But I don’t know how my mother is going to survive if I go. All that I earned from the paper factory is given to her. She needs the money to buy the medicine for my brother. Yet I want to lead my own life too. But I’m good for nothing. How will I manage...?”

“You’re not good for nothing,” I said, far too strongly. “You’re a clever, loving person. Good fortune is just not on your side. When I finish school and get a job, I will help you. I promise. Look, I’ve saved the money I got from selling the comics. You can have it all. Mak gave me a pair of gold earrings last year. You can pawn or sell them.”

“Oh, Phine...” She said, her voice charged with emotion.

Then she reached out and hugged me, her long hair draping over my shoulders. She was taller than me so I felt small in her arms. We were twinned in despair. I was sad and angry at the same time. An uneducated kampong girl seemed so powerless. Parvathi’s warm body shook with sobs. I too wept. I did not know then that it was going to be our last embrace.

“I wanna hold your hand, I wanna hold your hand,” Karim sang.

He was our kampong boy who had made good. For years his musical talent lay hidden as he went about doing his smelly job of clearing the buckets from the village out-houses. But encouraged by fellow villagers and Pak Osman in particular, who recognised his gift, he found a gig that gave him his first opportunity. Then he ended up playing professionally in a band at the cabaret at Great World on Kim Seng Road.

Karim was singing a song by a new boy-band sensation called The Beatles, from Liverpool, England. On February 9, the four boys appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show and created pop-music history. We had a belated telecast on TV, which we saw at the village coffee-shop, which had installed the TV to attract more customers. Previously, when we didn’t have electricity, we wouldn’t have been able to watch TV, so we were so grateful that now we could.

The kopitiam or coffee shop with its cement floor was open on two sides, with white marble table-tops and brown mahogany legs. Each table had an enamel spittoon under it. Black and white posters of Chinese women posing provocatively in high necked cheongsams slit at the thigh adorned the wooden walls. Most of the customers were men who wore singlets. Several trishaw-riders sat on their haunches on the chairs in their drawstring shorts, exposing the sinewy muscles of their brown legs. It required a lot of strength and stamina to ferry two passengers in a trishaw, especially if the customers were overweight and the riders had to ride uphill. Trishaws were a familiar sight on our roads, as most people could not afford a taxi. In the coffee shop, hot drinks were served in solid china cups and saucers. Trishaw riders tended to pour their hot drink into the saucer to cool it before drinking it out of the saucer. The spittoons were usually used by them as they often cleared their throats and spat into them.

So when our parents caught us behaving in an uncouth way, they would say, “Stop behaving like a trishaw rider!”

Of course we could not enter the coffee-shop as we were nonpaying customers, so we viewed the TV from afar. There was a cluster of children all trying to get a view of the TV screen. To me, the American impresario, Ed Sullivan, looked strange, with his jowly cheeks hanging down on each side of his face. He introduced the Beatles and the house went wild – teenage girls screamed as the boys with the pudding-basin haircuts came on.

“If only girls would scream like that for me when I came on stage,” Karim said.

His dream would never come true. Later in the same month, the management of Great World gave notice that it was shutting down due to financial loss. Great World was one of the three Worlds, besides Happy World and New World; entertainment centres for the ordinary family where there were fun-fair type stalls, shopping, food and a cabaret. So its demise not only affected all its employees, which included Karim, but also ordinary folk looking for value-entertainment.

The job loss threw Karim into depression. He was a good looking, well-built young man and had always been cheerful.

“I can’t go back to shovelling shit,” he confessed to Pak Osman.

Perhaps his former job had been tolerable when he did not know any other type of life, but now that he had been exposed to a different life, the idea of taking up his old job was repugnant to him.

“Maybe you can find another band to play with at Happy World. Or be a jaga or something,” Pak Osman suggested. “You don’t have to go back to your old job.”

The word jaga is Malay for watch and it can be both a verb and a noun. Pak Osman meant a security guard. Many of the local jagas were Sikh men, recognisable by the turbans on their heads. They usually positioned themselves in front of buildings, and slept at night on roped charpoys or cots outside the building they were guarding. The kind of work they did wasn’t exactly inspiring for a talented musician.

“Ya, maybe,” Karim said listlessly.

Despite the aggravation caused by the Anti-Malaysia saboteurs, there was still a sense of hope in our country. Whilst we were now part of a larger united nation, we also retained our own country’s identity. The Tourist Promotion Board decided that we needed our own symbol as a marketing tool to promote tourism, a symbol that would come to be associated with only Singapore, just like Big Ben is always associated with England and the Statue of Liberty with the United States.

In the Sejarah Melayu or Malay Annals, there was a story of how Singapore came to be named Singapura, our country’s name in Malay. Prior to that, our island had been called Temasek, which was just a small fishing village surrounded by huge forests and swamps, inhabited by the indigenous Malays. A prince from Indonesia, Sang Nila Utama, standing on a hill in his own country, saw the stretch of golden sand along our island’s beaches in the distance and was attracted. He sailed across the sea with his courtiers. When they landed and explored the island, he encountered a large animal with a hairy mane.

“What is the name of this creature?” He asked his courtiers.

“A singa, my lord.”

“This is such a propitious sighting. I shall name this island Singa-Pura, for I forecast that it will be a great city one day.”

The words ‘singa’ and ‘pura’ meant ‘lion’ and ‘city’ respectively in Sanskrit, and they carry the same meaning in Malay.

So it seemed appropriate that when looking for a symbol for our island-state, the Tourism Board would hark back to this legend and feature the fabled lion. But the lion was not unique to Singapore, as some other nations had already used it on their national flags and even to market their beer. Then some bright spark suggested that since Singapore was surrounded by the sea, that too should somehow be expressed in Singapore’s symbol. Thus the Mer-Lion was conceptualised, a fantastical creature with a lion’s head and the tail of a fish. The word mer is derived from the French word for sea. Perhaps our bright spark loved the famous song, “La Mer”, a song written in 1943 by French composer, lyricist and singer, Charles Trenet. It was a huge hit all over the world and for years after was still loved, even by non-French speaking people and was still featuring in the hit parade. In May, the sideways profile of the Merlion was launched with fanfare as the Tourism Board’s logo.

“Half lion, half fish??” My father said with incredulity when the news broke on television. “The person who designed it must be on LSD! It won’t work.”

But he was wrong, wasn’t he?

My father’s friend, Ah Gu, who was Chinese-educated and had his ears to the ground on every aspect of Chinese education, was incensed when the police raided Nanyang University. Some of the students were suspected of being communist activists.

“A thousand policemen, I tell you,” Ah Gu said with a raised voice. “They sent a thousand policemen to arrest fifty-one students! Why is it that people associate studying Chinese and having cultural ties with China as our link with communism?”

“Hush, Gu!” My father warned him. “These are sensitive times.”

In that my father was correct.

Another bomb exploded, this time at RAF Changi. We appeared to be punished for joining Malaysia. Konfrontasi, the programme of aggression instigated by Indonesian President Sukarno, was designed to weaken the resolve of our nation.

In our kampong, we lived and worked together as one large, friendly community but at the same time we celebrated our ethnic diversity. Malay, Chinese, Peranakans, Indians and Eurasians lived next door to each other without rancour; our doors open to each other. But konfrontasi, anti-Malaysia campaigns, and the communists’ agitations, all took their toll on racial harmony. Tension intensified from the previous year.

On July 21, many of our Malay villagers, including Pak Osman, Encik Salim and Karim got ready to celebrate Prophet Mohammed’s birthday. They dressed up in their religious best, wearing a freshly pressed baju or tunic and sarong. On their heads, they wore a songkok. They were going to join a procession that was to run from The Padang, the lawn area in front of City Hall to Kampong Geylang Serai.

It was a huge event, as thousands of Muslim devotees turned up. We listened to the commentary on Rediffusion and felt somewhat connected, as so many of our villagers were there too. The announcer said that they estimated that 25,000 Muslims had turned up for the event. There were opening prayers on the steps of City Hall, followed by speeches. We looked forward to the news on the evening’s television telecast, which always began at 6PM, so we could witness the joyous celebrations.

What we did not expect to see was chaos and carnage.

Apparently, at 5PM, when the walking procession was near Lorong 3, Geylang, a group strayed away from the main procession. A policeman – it was rumoured that he was a Chinese policeman, which was a significant fact – tried to persuade the group to go back and join the main procession. Instead of complying, the group attacked the policeman, and that was how the riot started. Suddenly it was not about being disciplined. Instead, the issue became why a Chinese person should interfere with a Malay proceeding. The tension of the previous year had come to a head. Fights broke out amongst the Chinese onlookers and the twenty-five thousand Muslims.

Pak Osman and Encik Salim came home without Karim.

“Poor Karim, poor Karim. The whole thing was utter madness,” Encik Salim said. “People were dying in order to be free to practise their religion and protect their culture – when they already have that freedom!”

“It’s so tragic! How has it developed into a racial thing?” Pak Osman said.

Worse was yet to come.

Rediffusion announced, “Urgent! Urgent! We are bringing you important news. The government is imposing a curfew all around the country. Everyone has to stay indoors from 9PM to 6AM...”

Apparently a group of youths, not content with unleashing their wrath on the procession, armed themselves with parangs and changkols and they roamed the island, trying to injure and slaughter those in their path. It aroused terror in our hearts. The Federal Reserve Unit and the riot squad were brought in. A curfew was imposed all around the country. Twenty-three people were killed and nearly 500 were injured, Karim amongst them. He lay in hospital, his life hanging on a thread.

When he was eventually discharged from hospital, he was a shadow of the man he used to be. He had sustained severe injuries and could not walk. He had lost his sense of dignity when he was laid off from employment, but now he lost his most treasured possession – his capacity to sing.

Even the atmosphere in our village changed. Where the different races used to live harmoniously, there was now a growing suspicion of each other. It worsened in September. On the 3^rd, in Geylang Serai, a Malay trishaw-rider was found murdered. The Malays believed that it was retaliation against the July Riots and that his attackers were ethnic Chinese. So another racial riot erupted around Geylang and the Peranakan enclaves of Joo Chiat and Siglap. But the violence was not confined to those areas- it spread all round the country so another country-wide curfew was imposed. Our village felt the impact of this particular riot more than the other one, as rioters ran into our village chasing each other, whilst some sought refuge. We shivered and crouched behind closed doors and shuttered windows as running footsteps went past. We heard shouts of agony as parangs were wielded. The memory of it stays lodged in my head, surfacing as incoherent nightmares. In this riot, 13 people were killed and 106 injured.

Malaysia’s acting Prime Minister, Tun Abdul Razak, appealed for calm. He wanted people to understand that the fight was not between local Malays and Chinese. It was believed that Indonesian saboteurs, bent on creating instability in the newly formed Malaysia, had instigated and orchestrated the chaos.

“This fight is not between Malays and Chinese,” Pak Osman reiterated Tun Razak’s message. “We must bear this in mind and not be led astray by the saboteurs. We have lived in harmony before and we can live in harmony again.”

But still it was not a year that could be forgotten.

Certainly not for me anyhow.

Just when the chaos in the country looked like it was settling down, a personal situation took a turn for the worse. Parvathi was betrothed. I was shocked that she was going to become a sacrificial lamb. But then it’s always easy to make a judgement when one isn’t caught up in the trauma. What choice had she got? She had no education, no money and little opportunity to overcome her circumstances.

When I got home from school, my mother handed me the earrings that I had given to Parvathi.

“She wants you to have these back,” Mak said.

I shuffled nervously on my feet. Mak had taken so long to save the money to buy the hooped earrings for my special Rabbit Year birthday the previous Chinese New Year. She must be furious at me for giving them away.

“She ... she needed money ... and I thought she might be able to pawn them...”

My mother went quiet for a few moments.

“I have raised you right,” she said, the stern look dissolving from her face. “Indeed, you should give away your prized possessions to help others in great need. But you should have told me. I could have found another way!”

Truly, my mother was a very special lady.

When Parvathi got home from work, I confronted her.

“Why are you giving up?” I asked her. “You can still live your life.”

“I have no choice. I have no choice,” she repeated in utter despair.

“Come,” I said, trying to lift her spirits. “Let us go and sit under the angsana tree. I have brought another book to read to you.”

It made me happy that she could enter a different world for an hour, and pretend that all was well. I will always remember that day. Her eyes were ringed with black kohl, her hands dyed in a pattern of henna, ready for her wedding. She looked beautiful as she leant against the trunk of the tree. She was not quite seventeen.

“Thank you, Phine. Remember what I said before, if you treasure freedom and are really living your life fully, know that you are making me happy wherever I may be.” Then she concluded. “You know, now that I have made my decision, I am actually quite resigned and feel so calm.”

Of course I had assumed that the decision she was referring to was the decision to marry the ugly old suitor that her father had found for her. But I assumed wrong.

The next morning when I heard her mother shrieking, I knew.

Pravathi had decided that dying was her only way to be free. She had swallowed all of the pills that were normally used to sedate her brother.

I could not bear to see her or to send her off to her cremation. I was told afterwards that she was placed in an open coffin, as was the Indian custom, bedecked with flowers. In the end, she still left our kampong like a bride. The morning of her funeral, I ran away into the grasslands that surrounded our village, wide fields of wild grass called lallang. The stiff, tall grass, some taller than a child’s height, had razor-sharp edges and could nick your bare flesh drawing blood. I ran crazed through the tall lallang and allowed it to draw blood.

Pravathi’s words went round and round in my head, I have no choice. I have no choice.