The Best I Could (13 page)

I assured him I wouldn’t. I was so thankful to be treated as a normal person. When I got back to the ward, I hid the stationery under my pillow. I would sit up at night, almost in darkness, and slowly pen my thoughts about what had happened to me so far. I wrote about how I had been framed and my early experiences in Queenstown Remand Prison. I questioned why I was in jail in the first place.

I can’t be sure, but on the ninth or tenth day at Changi Prison, I was told by one of the wardens that the psychiatrist would like to see me. I stuffed the paper down my shorts and walked with the warden to the psychiatrist’s room.

“Good morning, Subhas,” the psychiatrist said pleasantly.

“Good morning, doctor.”

He tried to reassure me. “You don’t know me but I know you. I’ve read about you. Your sister was a casual acquaintance a long time ago. We worked together but we have lost contact with each other. Do you smoke?”

“Yes,” I replied. He got me a cigarette and offered me a cup of coffee which I was happy to accept as it was a luxury in prison.

“Let’s talk,” he said, as soon as I had taken a few sips of the coffee.

“Before we talk, doctor, I had the privilege of getting a pen and some paper to write about my ordeal. So, why don’t you read what I’ve written and then you can start your evaluation of my mental condition.”

“Good,” he replied. I pulled out the paper from my shorts and gave it to him. He left a packet of cigarettes and matches on the table for me. As I puffed on another cigarette, the doctor read what I had written.

After reading my note, the doctor looked at me and said: “There’s no reason for me to question someone who can write so lucidly. You can’t be suffering from a mental disorder. Claustrophobia is not a mental disease. It’s just a frame of mind that some people have. I don’t see any reason why you should spend time here. What I’ll recommend is that you be transferred back to Queenstown Remand Prison and that you be kept in a grille.” He explained that in a grille, I would share a space that is enclosed with bars, not walls, with 14 other prisoners. I would be able to see beyond the cell. “I’ll ensure that they do so and if they don’t, there could be dire consequences. You can let your family know and they can tell the press,” he added.

I heaved an audible sigh of relief and thanked the doctor. I asked when I could get out and he replied as soon as possible. With that expectation, I returned to the ward much happier than when I left it to see the doctor. But I was still not sure when arrangements would be made to send me back to Queenstown. I was very keen to get out of Changi because I was terrified that someone would strangle me in my sleep. It wasn’t paranoia. On one of the nights, I had been jolted out of my sleep at about 3 o’clock in the morning by an inmate called Yusoff, who slept in the bed next to mine.

Yusoff had killed a security guard, the guard’s wife and their two children for throwing sand into his rice while he was at work. He had flown into a rage when he discovered what they had done and then gone off to Sungei Road where he bought a secondhand
parang
but not before having a good meal first. He paid five cents for the knife to be sharpened and, at midnight, went to the security officer’s home and decimated the whole family. He left an infant untouched because he said the infant hadn’t done anything. He was charged and convicted for murder, but because of insanity, he had been kept in the psychiatric ward under the President’s pleasure order. A very strong and violent person, Yusoff had required six to seven wardens to hold him down when he went mad. Everyone called him Raja Yusoff because he was king of the ward. He could even get away with hitting the superintendent because he was certified insane.

So, when he stood ominously over me in the dark at 3.00 am, I was terrified. But I couldn’t show him that.

“What is it, Yusoff? What are you looking at?” I asked him calmly.

“I’m hungry,” he replied in Malay.

A chill went through my body and I thought to myself: “Oh, my God! He’s hungry and he’s staring at me.” I fought to stay calm and asked him again, “What do you want?”

“I want your biscuits.”

My family had just visited that day and given me 2 katis (1.2 kg) of crackers. The biscuits that were allowed in prison were hard, tasteless, soda crackers, nothing like the Jacob’s brand of cream crackers that you would have at afternoon garden tea parties. You had to soften the biscuits by dunking them in the concoction the prison passed off as a beverage every morning.

“You want my biscuits? Take and eat them,” I told him.

You wouldn’t believe what Yusoff did. He sat down and ate up all the tasteless crackers in one sitting. Some of the other inmates got up at the noise of crunched crackers from Yusoff’s bed and stared sleepily at him but no one asked him for any. He was, after all, the raja of the ward. When Yusoff was done, he thanked me and went back to sleep. He was soon snoring.

Another inmate in the psychiatric ward was an Indian man charged with murdering his wife after finding her in bed with her lover. The lover managed to escape through a window but the wife was not so lucky. The man quietly took out a chopper from the kitchen drawer and chopped her head off. He then took a shower to wash off the blood on his body, put his wife’s head in a bag and cycled to Bukit Panjang police station. He deposited the bag on a table without saying a word. It was the middle of the night and a sergeant asked him, “Hey,
mama
, what are you doing here at this time of the night?”

“I want to report a case,” he replied.

The sergeant looked at him and said, “Okay, what case have you got? Report your case.”

Apparently, the man calmly took his wife’s head out of the bag. Holding it by the hair, he placed it on the sergeant’s table. Clotted globs of blood and severed tendons and arteries were said to be dangling from the neck. It seems that the sergeant fainted and was later demoted for fainting, which sounds a bit unfair. How often do you see a decapitated head in Singapore? The man was ultimately charged but also put into the psychiatric ward because he was deemed insane. So you can understand my constant state of apprehension while I remained in Changi Prison.

Every evening, at around 4 to 5 o’clock, we were taken out to the yard for some sunlight and exercise. Another Indian man, who was in prison for committing a murder, would come up to me every day.

“You’re a lawyer, is it?” he would say.

“Ya,” I would reply.

“Lend me $10.”

I would ask him why he wanted $10 as we were not allowed to have money. He always replied that he was being released that day and needed money to take a taxi home. Every day, I would give him the same answer: “There’s no problem even if you don’t have money. You see, when you reach home, your family will be there to receive you. They can pay the taxi driver.”

“Ya, I never thought of that! No wonder you’re a lawyer. You’re a very smart man.” He would walk away and the very next day, he would ask me for $10 again. This went on until I was transferred back to Queenstown Remand Prison.

A day or two after meeting the psychiatrist, the superintendent of Changi Prison informed me that the psychiatrist had reported that there was nothing wrong with me. The psychiatrist had said that I should not be kept in solitary confinement and had recommended that I be put in a grille. The superintendent was quite a good chap. He said that I would be sent back to Queenstown Remand Prison immediately.

I collected my belongings and said my goodbyes to the prisoners in the ward. Some of them understood what was going on but others just looked at me blankly. Now that I knew that I was leaving Changi, I was suddenly filled with compassion for them. I felt very sad as I didn’t know whether they would be released at all because nobody seemed to bother about them. I thought: “These are the forgotten ones. Their families have forgotten them. The authorities have forgotten them. I think they themselves have forgotten who they are or what they are.”

I walked outside and got into a waiting van. This time I was not handcuffed. The journey to Queenstown Prison seemed shorter than when I was being taken to Changi Prison. Perhaps it’s because I knew the destination this time around. On arrival at Queenstown, I was received by the officer of my block, a very short and kind officer called Osman. He looked at me and said, “Welcome back to Queenstown, Subhas.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“You’re not going to be in solitary confinement. You’re not going to stay in a small cell with others. You’re going to the grille upstairs.”

I asked if I could be taken to the grille where my friend Anthony Heng was. Anthony was my school football captain and we had played for Naval Base School together. He was being detained for a second time. Officer Osman agreed. I was glad it was him and not some other officer who could have been mean to me and refuse my request.

Osman escorted me to the grille upstairs. I shared it with 14 Chinese prisoners. Normally, being the last one in meant that I had to sleep on the floor, but the inmates had agreed to let me have the corner bed. It struck me all of a sudden that they had taken it upon themselves to make sure that my stay at Queenstown was as comfortable as possible. I think Anthony had a hand in it. They gave me a spare blanket, but I told them that I didn’t need one because I was used to sleeping on the balcony of my family’s flat in Naval Base. From that day onwards, someone in the grille would take my
sai thong
(sewage pot) to empty it in the main sewage tank and wash my clothes. Everyone appeared to want to do favours for me. It was like having many personal butlers, though I regarded them all as friends.

On my second day back at Queenstown, I was taken to the yard for the first time. Prisoners were allowed to bathe there every day. They were also allowed to play games or exercise or engage in their own activity freely. Some of the prisoners would wash their clothes which was one of the things you couldn’t do in the cells. The daily ‘freedom’ break was about two hours.

The officers were kind to me. They allowed me to shower early in the morning when everyone else had to get ready for work. They did not want to leave me alone in the grille as they were afraid I might lapse into the mental condition that saw me taken to Changi Prison. I think you could describe that condition as a depressed state.

Anyway, when yard-time came, Anthony Heng came along and sat with me, and we lit up our cigarettes. It was the first time I had felt relaxed since I was remanded. One by one, the other prisoners joined us, including one particular guy who was accompanied by two other men. He said: “Hey, lawyer. I’m the head of the Ang Soon Tong gang here and this is my deputy.” He didn’t bother to introduce the third person as obviously he must have been his ‘bodyguard’.

“I’m glad to meet you,” I replied.

“Do you have cigarettes?” he asked. Now, cigarettes are a precious commodity in prison. They are like cash. You could buy things with cigarettes. I thought that he wanted to extort cigarettes from me. I told him that I had enough for myself. Then he asked if I had biscuits. Again, I told him that I had enough for myself.

“Okay then,” he replied. He smiled and walked away. Before I could ask Anthony what that was all about, others came to introduce themselves and ask me the same questions.

I was puzzled. After all the gang leaders had introduced themselves, I asked Anthony, “Hey, what’s happening? What are these guys up to? Why are they interested in my cigarettes?”

“No, they’re just showing you respect. Whether you like it or not, Subhas, to these people and to many others outside, you’re one of the most high-ranking secret society triad members who have been detained. You’re like their boss, you know.”

I found the situation rather strange. All that they thought of me was untrue and I felt that Anthony had to tell them so. I was more concerned about clearing my name and reputation with the police, but here were people who believed that I was their triad boss. If they gave the jail wardens and police a wrong impression of me, I would be in trouble and would probably have to stay behind bars for a long time.

“You must tell them that this is all nonsense,” I told Anthony.

He looked at me and said, “This is a different world, Subhas. It’s a jungle here. Don’t worry, just ignore it.”

The next day, while I was sitting in the yard at the same time, all the leaders came up to me with biscuits and cigarettes. I had so much biscuits and cigarettes that I wondered what to do with them.

Anthony advised me: “Just ask them to keep the things for you.”

So I told the leaders: “I’m very grateful to you but if I take all these cigarettes and biscuits back to my grille, we will all get into trouble. Could you do something for me? Why don’t you keep these for me and you can give them to me when I want them.” They agreed and took them all back.

I used to smoke nearly four packets of cigarettes, 70 sticks or more, daily before my arrest. When I was in prison, my family was allowed to give me only 60 sticks of cigarettes for two weeks which meant I could only smoke four sticks each day.

Anthony said: “Subhas, it looks as though you’re going to be here for some time. You’re a lawyer and the people in your case, like the three brothers, have been here for some time already, you know. So why don’t you just resign yourself to the situation and don’t make a big fuss about it. If you’re going to be here for some time, you might as well enjoy all these benefits.”

I kept quiet. What he said made sense. If I was going to be there for a few years, I might as well be No. 1 and enjoy the biscuits, cigarettes, extra storybooks or whatever it was that they were prepared to share with me. Although, at the back of my mind, I felt that something was not right. There are certain things you can’t control when you’re in prison. I realised that I was not only a special prisoner to the authorities, I was also a special prisoner to the prisoners.

In prison, I was perpetually hungry. Breakfast was at around 6 o’clock in the morning when we received a cup of something to drink. I still don’t know what it is. It was not coffee nor tea nor Milo but more a concoction of substances that tasted a bit sweet. We were also given a bread roll which was so hard, we joked that if you were to hit a dog with it, you’d probably cause the dog to have a concussion. The bread tasted like rubber when you dunked it into the drink. It was so inedible that we would normally throw it away. I once asked the officer in charge why the bread was always so hard and he replied: “We have no choice on the matter. The bread that is served to you this morning was delivered to us one or two days ago. The bread doesn’t come in fresh every morning.” That was all we got for breakfast. For variety, we would dunk soda crackers that our families were allowed to give to us into our drink.