This series of posts grouped together under A Trek Into The Past is contributed by Yakkity Yak with whom I have shared good times and bad, many a cup of kopi o and quite a few zi char makans including the memorial one where the stall was raided by Environment Officers and we had to scoot off without finishing our meal. Reading his accounts stir many memories within, of the days when we were young and innocent, when gangsters ruled the streets and we struggled to make ends meet. These may not be the stories you find in books and official documents but they are nonethess richly lived experiences and real for all that. These are our little, personal histories of a past without which the Singapore of today would not be complete.
A Trek Into The Past: Kallang Days
“Home Was Where The Heart Was”
by
Yakkity Yak
It must be my masochistic streak that moved me to rake up past ambers and take a trek into the past. If anything, my past is but a painful one. It will be far better that I consign it to the dark recesses of ‘limbo- land’, much less to revisit it.
Not unlike many others of my vintage, my childhood days were nothing to relish about. Born into a poor family (and, for that matter, not just poor but crushingly poor), my entire childhood was shaped by experiences of want and deprivation. Home was an odd-shaped, smallish cubicle opposite the now defunct Kallang Gas Works. It is Spartan by the most Spartan standards. Within this not so sweet home, eight of us siblings lived in contorted-huddle for a good many years. But come to think of it, it is only now, when I reflect back, did I realize how appalling, things were then. At that time, I think we were probably too young to truly appreciate what good and bad living conditions were. Life then was nothing more than a series of ‘sleepings and wakings” We do not know enough of what transpired in between to depress us, even if they do not impress us.
The defunct Kallang Gas Works
The next picture shows the airport that gave the place its name,
The Kallang Airport
It was only when I was in my third schooling year did we moved into what seemed to be a palatial home in Old Kallang Airport. This was a three-room SIT flat where I lived till I set up my own home in the ‘70s at the mature age of 26.
A key distinguishing feature of Old Kallang Airport as a SIT-estate, the forerunner of the current term ‘HDB estate’, is that it is a hotbed of SS activities. It was the infamous relocation-centre of all the fire-victims from Geylang and Bukit Ho Swee. Both Geylang and Bukit Ho Swee were SS-infested and boasted some of the most treacherous SS groups in Singapore. So, when rival gangs from two notorious SS hot spots congregated in Kallang Airport, an immediate flash point for gangland war was created. Quite often, the quiet of the night would be broken by the sound of broken glass as glass bottles and bricks were hurled at two particular units of flats just below our block. I cannot really say for sure why these two units were the frequent targets, except to hazard at a guess. Perhaps, they were the living quarters of some rival headmen. Or were they the ‘safe-houses’ of members of one of the gangs?
I even had a close encounter with these gangs once. It was one of my many home-duties then, to fetch my younger brother from school in Tanjong Rhu, literally a stone’s throw away from the estate. I was about 11 years or so then and in Primary 5. To reach my younger brother’s school, I had to walk through a relatively deserted area flanking a canal. I was blissfully walking along when a boy, probably not much older and in wooden clogs swaggered up towards me. He caught hold of my shirt around the front collar area and asked in Hokkien: “Tit toh tor lok” which literally means “Where do you play?” Luckily for me I was no babe in the woods and knew exactly what that meant, never mind if in the literal sense, it merely questioned the location of my playground. I knew that in gangland parlance, this really meant “What gang do you belong to?” Frankly, I momentarily froze. In that split second of frozen-fear, I made some fast mental calculations, going over in my mind and ticking off all the options that were available to me. Should I impress him by randomly throwing up some gangland numbers? I have enough local knowledge to know that the gangs that roamed Kallang Airport were known by various number-codes. Should it be 24? 08? 969? Or more appropriately, since I am a true-blue Teochew, 32 (or Sar Ji the gang-code for all Teochew Triad members)? My precocious self however, told me that discretion was always the better part of valour! I reasoned that these were no lucky numbers and none of them could save me from a bashing. Worse still, why should I pretend that I belonged to a gang when I didn’t? I then hit on the brilliant idea that I should tell him that I belonged to no gang. So I summoned up all the courage that I had and in clear, unwavering voice, told him “Sio tee boh tit toh” or “Small brother does not play at all”. I used the words ‘small brother’, consciously in deference to him. It is, after all, a stock expression of humility in the world of secret societies and triads. I supposed this only saved me from a greater disaster as I did not go away totally unscathed. He rained a few blows on me. I took the blows with the stoic of a pugilist. Nay, in fact, I managed to dodge one or two and even warded off another. Not satisfied, he dug into my pocket and relieved me of all my earthly riches. He took away my hard-earned 30 cents which I just made, helping someone in a school tuck-shop during recess-time. I was supposed to dutifully return the money to my mother. You see, another of the duties assigned to me was to help in the tuck-shop in return for what was then, a princely sum of 30 cents. Those 30 cents could buy us a small swathe of pork and perhaps a few sprigs of vegetables for the dinner table. My woes, however, did not end there. Back home, everyone felt that I had made a less than convincing account of how I was 30 cents poorer!
This is but one of the many tough lessons I learnt on the streets, imbibing from the good old ‘school of hard knocks’, as they would say. It was my first baptism of fire and I, on hindsight, am glad to have received it on the streets. From thence, I honed my street-craft so that I could survive in this rough neighbourhood. I had old scores to settle and settle them in the streets, from a young age. I am, however, not sure if that has subconsciously got myself to be voluntarily-conscripted (what an oxymoron!) into the Police Force and at fairly decent rank of Assistant Superintendent, no less! But as I ruminate over the whole matter; street fights , street justice and all, I am at once reminded of William Wordsworth’s one simple dogma which he so painlessly put in one of his better known poems, thus:
"One impulse from a vernal wood
May teach you more of man
Of moral evil and of good
Than all the sages can."
The racial riots told me another facet of the secret societies and the triads. One day I saw two or three macho men, of the type whom you would call “Ah Beng’ today, scarred with tattoos of dragons, snakes and nude maidens and the ubiquitous Guan Yu, escorting my father back home. I was to later learn that the various SS groups operating at the Kallang Airport Estate sunk their differences temporarily during the racial riots, to help ‘protect’ whoever they think would potentially fall prey to the racial wars. These were heroic acts, carried out with benevolent intents. Much later, in the course of my Police work, I learnt that much of their rites and ceremonies, values and behaviour were inspired by Chinese legends such as the White Lotus Society, the 128 Shao Lin Monks, the Romance of The Three Kingdoms and Water Margin. One figure which most inspired all SS groups and have always been an iconic emblem of faithfulness, loyalty and brotherhood - the embodiment of the Hokkien term ‘Gee Ki’- is Guan Yu of the 3 Kingdom fame.
Every SS member true, to his salt would burn a tattoo of him on some part of his body as a badge of honour. Otherwise, he would erect at least a statuette in the altar in constant homage of the great God of War, which Guan Yu is otherwise, known as. Like the triumvirates of Guan Yu, Zhang Fei and Liu Bei, who swore to brotherhood in the peach garden, all SS members prized loyalty and abhor treachery and betrayal. Treachery and betrayal were shown by the 7th monk in the exploits of the 128 Shao Lin Monks. Hence, anyone of suspect loyalty in the SS fraternity is branded immediately as an ‘Ah Chit” or No 7 in Hokkien.
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