Where do you find a Musical Cat?: "Serangoon Road"

I've watched the first few episodes of this Australian-Singaporean collaboration, with great interest. I've struggled to remember when it is on, or to get to the set having remembered, but fortunately have been able to watch it in instalments on ABC iView and have now caught up with all three weeks worth.

The serialized drama has so far offered intriguing and shocking insights into the complex world of Singapore in the 1960s, through the vehicle of the Cheng Detective Agency: The British, The Americans, The Chinese gangs and The Malays, all vying for supremacy in an atmosphere of uncertainty, upheaval and corruption. Not only inter-cultural rivalries, but internal ones: The American law-enforcers paranoid about a Communist take-over; cowardly, White Supremacist American GIs killing those within their own ranks over petty rivalries and then blaming their African-American colleagues in arms; The British hatred of the Americans and their pompous, superciliousness as they looking down upon the larrikin Aussies, and so on. So The Cheng Detective Agency, which employs the skills of a variety of individuals, in both a formal and informal capacity, represents a breath of fresh air, in its willingness for the culturally diverse team to work together harmoniously and collaboratively to solve personal mysteries which nonetheless touch on the political events of the time.

Last week's episode had me weeping at the story of a Chinese-Singaporean woman who, having been deported back to China after surviving Japanese-occupied Singapore and who had thus lost her citizenship, returned to Singapore twenty years later, was poisoned by her successor-wife yet, with the help of the Cheng gang, survived that and was eventually re-united with her husband, their abiding love undiminished by time and ageing and wife numero due duly carted off to prison for her folly (Changi Women's Prison, whose ominous edifice my son and I passed on the bus).

Watching the latest episode tonight, I was shocked at the extent and the devastation of the rioting depicted by Sernagoon Road, that which occurred in 1964. The first and most infamous episodes had occurred just prior to our arrival, in 1964. There is a good account of these events here on the Remember Singapore website (among lots of other interesting and informative Singapore nostalgia) and here on Wikipedia.

Indeed, riots are reported to have occurred in Singapore as occurred as early as 1950:

"The Maria Hertogh riots, began on 11 December 1950 in Singapore after a court decided that a child who had been raised by Muslims should be returned to her biological Catholic parents. A protest by outraged Muslims escalated into a riot when images were published showing 13-year-old Maria Hertogh (or Bertha Hertogh) kneeling before a statue of the Virgin Mary. Riots in Singapore lasted till noon on 13 December 1950. In total 18 people were killed and 173 injured. Many properties were also damaged. Hertogh (also known as Nadrah) had been in the care of Aminah binte Mohamed before being returned to her biological Dutch Catholic parents."

I was unwittingly and innocently a part of this turbulent epoch in Singapore's history, by virtue of living in Changi as an RAF kid, during the time of further riots and bombings, from 1967 to 1970. The most direct impact of this was that two children who travelled on my brother's school bus, one of whom was in his class, were injured and killed respectively by "red flag bombs" planted near where we lived—purported to have been put there by pro-Communists. Here is an account of the riots that occurred during our time, in 1969.

I was probably too young to register the full scenario. Being in Changi and part of an essentially British enclave, we must have been comparatively protected. How terrible for those living and working in the thick of the unrest! But I do recall that the vast expanse of green at the end of our road suddenly became off-limits, my father gravely instructing us not to play there any more. Even at the age of not-quite five, this was a disappointment, since we went to the padang regularly to fly kites, either made by Dad or bought from Han the greengrocer, who would magically produce such wonders from the back of his van. Although they tried to protect us from the news, in the way of children, we somehow got wind of the death of my brother's classmate, which was deeply disquieting. And so my world was rocked in its own small way.

Since reading the newspaper articles about the flag bombs, which Stanley Ng kindly forwarded to me, I've been feeling sad for those kids' families. I was never sure that one of them had died, so i was abit shocked to see that the girl Katty did. I think maybe my parents protected us form the full details at the time.

I mentioned it to my Dad. He told me he remembers vividly the day the policeman came to the airbase where he worked in air traffic control. The officer told them that a bomb had gone off near Jalan Pergam and injured two British kids. Dad told me he went as white as a sheet with worry, in case it was my brother and myself. He was distressed for the other families, but so relieved it wasn't us.

I'm kind of interested in the sense of being interested in the history of what was happening in Singapore politically and socially at the time, that led to such bombs. I'm not sure if Serangoon Rd will touch on all this, but perhaps it may— it opens in 1964.

I think imperfect grammar is forgivable on blogs, so long as we understand each other. I type too fast and end up mis-spelling things!

I admit that, perhaps due to my own unwitting placement in it, I am variously magnetized to, repelled by, and saddened by the footage of the riots, by the carnage and mayhem generated by a nation full of fearful people mostly desperately trying to survive difficult times, each cultural group fearing decimation.

The Singapore of today seem so (outwardly at least) so much more tolerant and multi-cultural. Perhaps cultural tensions persist beneath the surface, but outwardly there is certainly a semblance of integration. Serangoon Road encapsulates this attempt on the part of courageous pioneering individuals who made an effort to respect each other as fellow human beings, learn each other's languages, and co-operate in the face of more pressing, broader global political concerns.

Here's a decent review of the series from The Australian newspaper, if you'd prefer to cheat and miss the actual episodes. Amazing what insomnia unearths!