Somme Road is a short cul-de-sac that once led to a New World of glamour and gallivantry. Today, the lane skirts a square of vice and skims by a row of porcelain houses that nearly fell to the wrecker's ball. Towering apartments now occupy the former fairgrounds; their residents, citizens of a grander world, are shielded from the life of the surrounding streets by a manicured garden with a centrepiece in the form of a fig tree, which once harboured a happy shrine and might have overseen the neighbourhood's livelier years. Now, the park serves as a buffer zone and urban breathing space where old men linger and pigeons feed to pass their days.
A row of uneven townhouses is all that remains of the ghosts that once haunted this battlefield of spirits. One hosts a school of martial arts; another is a scene for holistic assemblies. At the dead end of the street is a little shed of sundry goods which might be an extension of the corner shop but possesses enough character to deserve a plot of its own. I recall coming across, some years ago, a house of feudal gods and much earlier, another shrine that reeked of folklore and horroriental fantasy.
About a fortnight ago, a chance walk down this sleepy corner of the city led us to note one house with lime-painted walls and pine-coated windows and doors. A brief argument on the utility of horizontal bars that span the entrance of the facility lulled our senses just enough to result in rude shock when a small figure materialised on top of a municipal bin. The culprit was a cock, dripping white tail plumes and standing stiff against a pillar that hid him from plain view. The rooster was a bantamweight but bore spurs as long as my little finger, which he paraded by spinning on his heels and strutting about the five-foot way with the air of a streetfighter. There was no contest, for the bird was on home territory and marched all the way to the shed at the foot of the lane to signal the limits of his command to fowl of lesser means.
The Big Road leads to a former swampland and the drained basin of Singapore's longest river, which once rose with the tide to threaten temples and shanty towns that occupied firmer portions of the estuary. Fires, floods and finally, the force of law have since consumed what remained of these communities in the latter half of the 20th century. Factories and flats now rise above the hunting grounds of the island's first nations. Riverine villages established by mariners from the Java Sea have long vanished under parkland and concrete banks.
Herons and kingfishers still prowl the less disturbed reaches of a waterway that has been tamed and tethered in the name of greater goods. There are no more tides to remind those who live and play by the river that the sea is merely at bay and not a beast in permanent captivity. Crepuscular dragonflies emerge when the sun dives under a barrage of polished sand. I cross a bridge to the seaward side and see a group of Thais celebrating their year-end festival of lights with a homemade flotilla of banana leaves and royal blossoms. Bats begin to swoop over the water. There is just enough light to make out a colony of mostly ginger cats before the park is bisected by a cold highway. A council worker, almost certainly not native-born, walks over as I attempt to poke a flabby puss, remarking meekly that the animals are taken care of, presumably by himself and other nameless souls. It was a bold statement, for both parties risk the wrath of countrymen who cannot fathom any greater need than the eternal drive to survive and neither enjoy the rights that accrue to those who could vote for small mercies in a land governed by the rule of roar.
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