1824
Naraina Pillai thanked Arjun Nath for his five years of service, and for one last time tried to persuade him to stay. They had both come down from Penang with Raffles the year the settlement was founded, and when Naraina had set up the first brick-kilns in Singapore, Arjun had worked for him. Naraina had been so impressed with his brick-making skills and ability to manage the other workers that he had put Arjun in charge of half of his kilns, as his business expanded with the growth of the town and the demand for solid brick structures.
Arjun had done quite well for himself, having managed to save a decent amount of money and built himself a small but comfortable brick house. But he did not wish to spend the rest of his life as a brickmaker. There were two things in life that he desired with a passion: cattle and a wife. The first desire he had already managed to satisfy. He had purchased a small dairy herd from an Arab merchant who had arranged for their shipment from Penang. It had cost him dearly but he had been willing to pay the price: it had been his dream to be a dairy farmer since he was a young boy, when he had first seen the cattle herds in the open pastures on Prince of Wales Island.[1] But a wife was another matter altogether. Where on earth was he going to get a good Hindu bride in Singapore, or any kind of bride in Singapore?
After he had said his farewells to Naraina Pillai, and thanked him for his support, Arjun visited the Hindu temple on South Bridge Road, which ran through the Chinese part of the town. It was a small wood and attap structure with an inner sanctorum dedicated to the goddess Sri Mariamman.[2] Arjun made an offering of rice and green gam[3] bean to the mother goddess, and humbly asked for her help in finding him a wife. As he walked home afterwards, he wondered how even a goddess could help him find a wife in this lonely place.
Then that night as he lay asleep on his cot he had the strangest dream. He was walking along a path. He could not tell where, because everything was engulfed in a thick white mist. All of a sudden he came upon a tiger standing directly in his path. He stopped dead in his tracks and stared at the tiger, stricken with fear. He wished he had brought some weapon with him, but he was naked save for the loose dhoti he wore around his waist. The tiger stared back at him, making no movement or sound. In the yellow eyes and bared fangs of the great cat he saw a vision of his own death––a sudden roaring, tearing, bleeding death––but he held his ground, and the tiger’s eyes in his own. He stood frozen to the spot, waiting for the animal to pounce. He knew there was no point in trying to run, for he knew this much about tigers––they preferred to take their victims from behind.
Then as he waited the mist cleared from the path, and he saw her standing straight and tall behind the tiger, her long black hair hanging down almost to her waist, her breasts pressing full and proud through her cotton shift. Her face was beautiful beyond words, with high cheekbones, full lips, a long slender nose, her eyes dark and deep as the night. He looked into them and saw, not his own death, but his own future life, his happiness and his children. He was wondering on this when he suddenly noticed the letters emblazoned on her forehead. D–o–o–m–g–a. Murder!
He heard a goat bleating urgently nearby, but before he could turn his head, the scene before him dissolved into darkness and silence. Arjun woke from his dream, drenched in sweat, and trembling in fear and wonder. What did it mean? A few weeks later he found out.
* * *
Arjun was walking back home from Telok Ayer market. He had thought about his dream, and had gone to the Sri Mariamman temple to seek guidance, but it remained as much a mystery to him as before. Then as he approached the well that served the market, he saw her, standing tall before him, a water pitcher poised gracefully on her head. She stood still as a statue, like the figure in his dream. And there was the word, D-o-o-m-g-a, written on her forehead. Murder! What did it mean?
Arjun slowed to a stop, and stood staring at her. She was clad in a long red cotton robe, that hung suspended from her breasts, and she looked directly at him, her dark eyes imploring him…To do what? She did not move, and did not utter a sound, but she was trying to speak to him with her eyes.
He inched forward, very carefully and cautiously, until he passed by the edge of the well. The tiger stood straight in front of him––teeth bared, its yellow eyes full of evil––as if it had been waiting there for him all the long time. Arjun cursed himself for not having brought any weapon. He had been warned in his dream, but had never thought to take precautions against a real tiger. Now it was too late. What had been ordained had come to pass. The tiger would kill him, in front of this beautiful and graceful woman he had come to love, if only in his dreams. The tiger growled softly, as if savouring the moment. Arjun looked away from its hateful, cruel eyes, and looked back into hers, as he prepared for death, no longer in a dream.
The goat bleated, softly at first, but then with increasing frenzy. She had smelt the tiger, and could not escape––she was tethered securely to a post at the edge of the road. The tiger turned around and bounded towards her, tearing out her throat with a stroke of its mighty paw. The tiger bent over the lifeless body and took the goat between its teeth. Then it ripped the animal from its tether and padded off into the narrow alleys of the Chinese town.
Arjun went to the woman, who was trembling violently. He took the water jug from her, and placed it upon the ground, then led her towards the well, where he made her sit upon the makeshift bench that ran around it, and brought her some water. He told her that everything was all right, and that he would take care of her from now on. She gave him a puzzled look, and then he told her about his dream. As he spoke, she put her hand to her mouth, and her eyes opened wide. She had the most beautiful brown eyes he had ever seen, deep and dark and penetrating the depths of his being. She told him that she had dreamt of him also, and of the tiger and the bleating goat, and then they knew that they were meant for each other.
She was a convict, a murderess who had been transported from Calcutta some months before. She had been married to a man whom she had greatly admired when they had first met. He was handsome and clever, and a minor landowner who was greatly respected in her home village. Her parents had assured her that they had made a good marriage for her, and she had looked forward to a good life. But her husband was a cruel man with a twisted passion, who beat her regularly, but most often during intercourse. He seemed to find it necessary in order to perform his duty as a husband, although he appeared to derive no pleasure from it, and nor had she. She had put up with his behaviour for the sake of her parents and her own children. Their son had died when he was very young, after a black cobra had bitten him, but their daughter had grown up to become a beautiful young women, and had become a great source of comfort and pride to her.
Then one day she had come in from the garden to find her husband forcing himself on their daughter. He held her by her long black hair on her knees before him, and was trying to force the girl to take his swollen member in her mouth. She had been harvesting red chillies in the garden, and when she saw what was happening she went straight up to him and rubbed them into both of his eyes. Her husband screamed in rage, and in his rage he kicked their daughter hard in the chest, hurling her with great force against the edge of the iron stove, where she split her skull and spilled her young brains across the earthen floor. Then he came for her, his outstretched hands reaching for her neck. She stepped away from him and snatched up a heavy chopping knife, which she drove into the side of his neck. The blow struck an artery, and the red blood sprayed across the room and over her body. He had stumbled forward and fallen to the ground, but she had not stopped––she kept on chopping, chopping, chopping, until he was a bloody pulp upon the floor, and her arm was too weak to strike another blow.
They had found her there, in a great pool of congealing blood, sitting with her dead daughter in her arms, tears rolling down her cheeks. She had shed her tears for her daughter, but not for her husband. She was glad that he was dead, and she was glad she had killed him. She was merely the instrument of his evil karma. She had been quickly tried and found guilty of murder, and they had branded her crime on her forehead. But the authorities had commuted her death sentence to transportation, because of their reluctance to execute a woman. She had been sent to Singapore with a shipment of other convicts some months before. There had been only one other woman with them, and she had died of fever on the voyage. She expected the worst, but had not cared whether she lived or died for she knew her life was over.
Yet the authorities had treated her well enough. The convicts were given a great deal of freedom, and within a week she had been placed as a servant with a wealthy Chinese shopkeeper, who also owned fruit and vegetable stalls in the market. He treated her like any regular servant, no better and no worse. She was free to leave his premises in the course of her duties, and allowed to sleep in the hut at the back of his shop at night. So here she was, a murderess serving out her sentence in Singapore. She told him she did not imagine he would still believe that they were meant for each other, now that he had heard her story. But Arjun assured her that he did. He told her that he wanted to marry her and have children by her. He had not the slightest doubt about that. She smiled broadly when he said this, and wondered at how quickly a life could change. She told him her name, Chandi, which means moonlight.
Arjun spent days negotiating her release into his custody. There was no problem with the authorities, since Naraina Pillai spoke for him, but the Chinese shopkeeper held out for as much compensation as he could get. He tried the limits of Arjun’s patience, so he succeeded in securing far more than Arjun had expected to pay. Ho Liang Chiang could tell that Arjun wanted this woman very badly, so he had negotiated hard. But Arjun did not mind. He had solved the mystery of his dream, and he had discovered the mystery of love.
* * *
The Anglo-Dutch Treaty signed in London in March 1824 finally removed all doubts about the future of Singapore. The Dutch ceded Malacca to the British, formally withdrew all their objections to the occupation of Singapore, and recognized the Malayan Peninsula as a British sphere of influence. In return the British ceded Bencoolen to the Dutch, and recognized Dutch authority in all the territories south of the Strait of Singapore.
By this time Singapore was well established as a thriving commercial centre, whose trade greatly surpassed that of Malacca and Penang combined. In the first official census taken that year, the population numbered nearly eleven thousand. The Malays were still the largest community, with four thousand, five hundred and eighty, with the Chinese a close second, with three thousand, three hundred; the Bugis were the third largest, with one thousand, nine hundred and twenty five. There were seven hundred and fifty Indians, seventy-four Europeans, sixteen Armenians and fifteen Arabs.
Crawfurd oversaw the improvement of the town streets and the laying out of new ones, including the new Commercial Square, where the merchant godowns and shops on Boat Quay backed up from the western side. The new resident also supervised the erection of street signs with English names, and introduced street lighting to the town in the form of coconut-lamps.
Crawfurd received a letter from the Governor General questioning Raffles’ commitment of four thousand dollars of Company money to the Singapore Institution. Crawfurd admired Raffles’ noble educational goals, but thought his idea of an institute of higher education hopelessly idealistic and premature. Farquhar did request financial support for a more modest use for the Singapore Institution, to introduce a form of primary education that would be of immediate practical benefit, by training the native population in the basic linguistic and mathematical skills that would be in high demand in the expanding economy. Yet his request was also refused. The Singapore Institution was built as planned, but to little avail. When three Chinese workers fell to their deaths from the scaffolding while the final sections of the roof were being secured, it was considered a bad omen. The building was not used for either primary or higher education, and stood as an empty shell for many years afterwards.