A walk into the recent past

Throw back to the 40s, 50s, or even early 60s, there were probably a million people here, or lesser in the 40s. Many were stateless, new migrants allowed to work but no citizenship status. They just fended for themselves under the colonial administration that would be very happy as long as there was no problem from the population of migrants. The migrants knew their station in life and kept to themselves, away from the law, and just worked and lived.

The long arm of the law was thin and short. Land was aplenty, state land, neglected land or untended land everywhere, officially owned by the colonial Govt. The migrants came and looked for a place to stay. Many were herded into the cubicles of Chinatown for the Chinese while the Indians would have their own appointed corner in the island. I was at Thian Hock Keng a couple of days ago and could not imagine that some 80 years ago my parents were standing in front of ‘Ma Cho’ praying at the very same spot that I stood before settling down in this island.

They were not so fortunate but braved the uncertainties and unknown, moved to the foothill of Mount Faber where a Malay kampong Radin Mas stood. At the fringes of the kampong they simply erected a hut from whatever wood available and there was instant home. Many migrants did just that, built themselves a home on any vacant land they could find, away from the kampongs or towns. And there were plenty of land all over the island. After sometimes they would become owner or official tenants of their huts. The ‘teh gus’ would come to register their huts and a official address was given, and that was it. It was like finder’s keepers. I think in the early days there was a law that said once a person occupied a land, built his hut, and lived there after some years, then the land became his, or something like that. It was like choped choped, but not with tissue papers.

And this was not too long ago. The early years of colonial Singapore when the island was too large to administer and too few people to fill up the vacant land. Land was not scarce like today. It is all relativism. Try imagine 2030. Everything will be scarce except people in this island.