The Best I Could (4 page)

My early education in the Base was fun. When I first started, there were students as old as nine and ten years in my class. As it was a private school, age was not an issue when you were put into a class. The monitors were chosen by the teachers according to size. The bigger you were, the better your chances of being selected. My class had two monitors, one to look out for the boys and one for the girls. I recall they happened to be a brother and sister team. They were much taller and heavier than the rest of us. Even at that age, they knew how to abuse their positions. They would terrorise the rest of us with their clique of friends.

My best friend at that time was a boy called Shashideran, who was Malayalee like me. After months of being bullied by the two monitors, we decided we would not take it any more. One day, during our recess period, we cornered the male monitor in a secluded part of the school grounds and beat him up. His sister came to his rescue but we beat her up too. We were too young to know about being gentlemanly and not hitting girls. When their friends came to help them, many of our classmates joined Shashi and I in the fight. It was eventually stopped by some older students.

When we returned to class after recess, all hell broke loose. Our form teacher, Mrs Foo, was fuming mad. When the monitors were asked about the incident, they pointed without hesitation at Shashi and I as the main instigators. The boy’s shirt was torn and he had bruises on his body, topped off by a beautiful black eye. The image of that black eye shines brightly in my memory even today. His sister’s blouse was also torn and she too had bruises though they weren’t as bad. Mrs Foo beckoned Shashi and I to the front of the class. When she asked us if it was true that we had inflicted the injuries, I didn’t lie. I said yes. She stared at me for some time. Then she asked me if I was a hooligan. That was a new word to me and I wondered for a moment what the right answer was. As I had said yes to her first question, I decided to be consistent and say yes again. As soon as I said it, Mrs Foo slapped me. I didn’t have time to duck. I don’t think teachers are allowed to slap students these days, but when I was younger, it was not an issue. Teachers could hit us on the knuckles with rulers, pull our ears and grab our hair without compunction. It was all part of the character-building process. My face stung with pain and I knew I had given the wrong answer. She turned to Shashi and asked him whether he was a hooligan. Without hesitation, he said yes too and received an even harder slap. As Shashi was fair-skinned, his face soon turned red. Later I asked Shashi why he answered yes, knowing that I got slapped for that same answer. He told me he hadn’t realised that. Shashi was a great kid, if not particularly bright. I bumped into him a few years ago. He was driving a taxi for a living and looking very well. We laughed over the incident. However, I must say that Mrs Foo was a fair lady. She made her own inquiries into why the monitors had been assaulted and discovered their bullying nature. They were removed from their positions and we spent the rest of the year with no monitors. That was the end of the indiscriminate bullying.

I did well in primary school, gaining a double promotion from Standard I to Standard III. I was almost given a second double promotion from Standard III to Standard V, but it was vetoed by the Principal, Mr Thambapillay. He said I was too young to be in Standard V. By the time I reached Standard V, our school was transferred to the Naval Base School, and Admiralty Asian School ceased to exist. From then on, we were in a properly run school under the Ministry of Education.

While my primary school days were fun, I think I spent the happiest times of my life in Naval Base School. At the time, it was the only government, English-medium school in Singapore with pupils from Primary 1 to Secondary 4. It was also a co-ed school with morning and afternoon sessions. Children from the greater Sembawang area went to the school, creating a rich mix of students from different backgrounds. Some of them came from families who were so poor that they found it difficult to pay school fees. They often didn’t have enough money to buy even the cheapest items in the school tuckshop. I remember some of them living in attap huts in the Sembawang area. Conditions were squalid in those days, with families living in small partitioned rooms within each hut. A common kitchen served all the families. The toilet facilities comprised an outhouse which nightsoil carriers cleared each day. Many residents still used well water to bathe but there were PUB standpipes serving villages. I don’t think they had electricity, telephones or street lights. The roads were muddy tracks that would become rivers of flowing mud when it rained heavily. Kerosene lamps were the brightest source of light and these usually lit up the common verandahs of the attap huts. Inside their partitioned rooms, residents had to make do with candles. I felt lucky to be living in the relative comfort of Block 9. The circumstances from which the poorer students came drove some of them to work extremely hard at school so they could escape the poverty trap. Many succeeded, going on to become lawyers like me, and doctors and engineers. Some went into business. But the same poverty also drove others to crime. Many of my friends joined the triads of the time, with some becoming powerful leaders in them. Some of those who had chosen crime went to jail while others just vanished from Singapore.

Along the way, there were some wonderful teachers who genuinely cared about us. Names like Oliver Seet and Gabriel Pillai ring from my past. They were the kind of teachers who went the extra mile for us and inspired us to think about our futures. Former young ‘hooligans’ like me will forever be grateful to them. Unfortunately, we had many more teachers who were not particularly interested in teaching us. They just went through the motions. Some openly told us we didn’t have to aim high in our exams but to just do well enough to find employment within the Base. Perhaps they felt that it was noble to follow in our fathers’ footsteps, but I’ve always felt they should have given us more to aim for. They should have allowed us to dream. When the bell rang at the end of each school day, some of these teachers raced off in their Volkswagens or Morris Minors or motorbikes.

I was at Naval Base School throughout my secondary school education. From a personal viewpoint, Secondary 1 and 2 were terrible years academically. I only just managed to pass those years and was usually propping up the rest of the class in our tests. It didn’t help that my disciplinary record was also among the worst in my class. We got into trouble for a range of things, including fighting, truancy and playing jokes on our teachers and other students. In Secondary 2, I was nearly expelled for hitting a prefect who I felt was dishonest. My instincts about him were later proven to be correct. Mr Pillai, who knew my family, came to my rescue. He gave a guarantee to the school principal that I would behave. It was an incredibly risky thing for him to do. Looking back, I think that represented a key crossroads in my life. I had to change my ways or I was out of school. My deepest fears relating to my parents reverberated around that misdeed. Mr Pillai’s faith in me also had an impact. I decided to change my ways insofar as a young boy can make such a momentous decision. It was helpful that many of my cohorts in misbehaviour had by then left school to start work. It made it easier to concentrate on my studies as there were fewer people to distract me. I started to be more attentive in class and stopped playing truant. I took exams seriously, actually making an effort to study for them. The teachers were happy with my progress and their mantra of “Must try harder” gradually became one of “Has shown good progress”.

My turnaround from being a chronic troublemaker in school was complete when at the end of Secondary 3, I was nominated by the teachers to be a prefect. It was a terribly embarrassing moment for someone like me who had shown scant respect for authority, apart from my parents, for much of my life. I decided to accept the nomination only because my childhood friend, David Cheng Lai Beng, who had also been nominated, said it would look good in our testimonials if we were prefects. I can remember vividly the first day of the new school year walking through the gates of Naval Base School wearing my prefect’s badge. I was jeered. Things soon got worse as Lai Beng left school after only about a month to become an apprentice at the Base. I was alone with my prefect’s badge.

I think I was born to be a prefect. I remember minute details of my duties. The disclipinary master would send me to admonish the most notorious characters in school. In fact, my proficiency as a prefect got me appointed as assistant head boy of the school. I was really flying in those days. I was also elected house captain and chairman of the drama society, and I won school colours for athletics, hockey and soccer. I participated in all these sports at combined schools events too. These activities certainly helped mould my character, and I still look back at my youthful achievements with tremendous pride.

Though my star shone brightly in the second half of my secondary school years, I didn’t forget the friends I used to get into trouble with. We remained supremely loyal to each other even though we didn’t see each other as often as before. I recall once getting into serious trouble with my friends Lai Beng and Thee Kow while waiting for my ‘O’ level results. Lai Beng lived in Block 26 in the Base which faced some bachelors’ quarters. There was a Malayalee man who would always stand at his balcony in his underwear, knowing full well that women lived in Lai Beng’s block. Since he was Malayalee, it was decided by my friends that I should tell him to put on his trousers whenever he was at the balcony. One day, seeing him at the balcony, I called out to him and politely suggested this to him. He didn’t take it well.

“It’s none of your business,” he said gruffly.

“It’s very rude,” I replied earnestly. “There are ladies around.”

“Who are you to tell me what to wear in my own house? Just get out of here,” he screamed.

After quickly putting on a pair of trousers, the Malayalee man came running downstairs brandishing a knife. In a flash, Lai Beng and Thee Kow were by my side. He probably expected us to run away, but I stood my ground and hit him instead. The next thing we knew, the man’s roommates came charging down and a scuffle broke out. We were initially outnumbered but help was at hand. Former national footballer Quah Kim Lye, his friends and other boys from the neighbouring blocks came to back us up. The Malayalee man was given the beating we all felt he deserved. In the meantime, somebody had called the police. When they came, the Malayalee man pointed at me, Lai Beng and Thee Kow as the main assailants. We were arrested on the spot and taken to the police station in a police car. The Malayalee man, somewhat bruised and battered, was allowed to cycle to the station at his leisure.

We were kept in the police lockup for a long time. Lai Beng was the most worried among the three of us. He was scared about losing his fledgling job in the Base. Since we were students, Thee Kow (who is now a teacher) and I weren’t too worried. We knew we had done the right thing by confronting the Malayalee man about his indecency. We tried to distract Lai Beng by singing Elvis Presley’s songs. I suppose we got carried away. A police officer came to tell us to shut up as a white police officer had arrived at the station to handle our case. White police officers were always the most senior officers in the Base in those days, and it was claimed that they came from Scotland Yard.

An hour later, we were taken to see the white police officer. He asked whether we needed an interpreter. In my best English, I said, “No, thank you, sir.” He appeared to be very impressed by my grasp of his native tongue as I explained to him what the Malayalee man had a habit of doing at his balcony. I was only 15 years old and my two friends were 16, but we knew that what the man did was wrong. The officer agreed with us and gave the man a telling-off. As he had the authority to do so, he also told the man to find alternative accommodation. Lai Beng, Thee Kow and I escaped with only a warning. To Lai Beng’s relief, the white officer assumed all three of us were students.

The memory of this particular incident came back to me a few years ago when I learnt that Lai Beng had died suddenly of a heart attack. The morning he died, his daughter rang me at home. In between her sobs, she asked me about my health. She knew I had a heart problem. After her call, I had to sit down and steady myself as I thought about my old friend. His wake was surreal. It had always been his wish to have Elvis Presley’s songs at his funeral. As each song played, I had to choke back the tears because I could see Lai Beng miming those songs himself. When I saw him lying in his coffin, I was overcome by a sense of helplessness. His wife, Swee Neo, who is a sibling in the Quah footballing family, came to me and held my hands. Because we had all been through so much together she, more than anyone, could understand how I felt.

The Malayalee man incident made Lai Beng, Thee Kow and me heroes in our neighbourhood. Women thanked us for taking a stand against the “horrible half-naked Malayalee man” as they described him, while the men told us they should have done something about it themselves long before we did. I was on a high by the time I got home and was not prepared for the reaction of my parents. My mother was in tears, saying I had brought shame to my family by being put in jail. My father wanted to disown me and scolded my mother for spoiling me. The next two days were unbearable because I had to deal with my parents’ disappointment.

Then our exam results were released. Now, parents tend to forgive their children for any indiscretion if they do well in their examinations. I was the only one in the Base who achieved a First Grade, and it made me a celebrity again in our neighbourhood. My father was waiting for me when I came home and that was the one time in my life I remember him hugging me.

“What do you think of my son now?” he asked my mother proudly.

She laughed happily. “Just two days ago, you wanted to disown him. Now, he’s your son.”

The enormity of my academic achievement did not really strike me until Mr Thomas Joy came to our house that night to congratulate me. He was the person who taught me the English alphabet when I was a child. When I saw the tears and pride in his eyes, I was glad I had studied for the exams.