Lines

Be aware of the smallest ant, the quietest moth, the stillest caterpillar… to be mindful of these focuses all of your attention in the now.

Have you ever watched ants? I have watched them for hours as a child. Ants are a classic example of sure-footed creatures that are amazingly industrious and cooperative and they always seem to have the time to stop and say a quick hello to each other. I love how they carry food above their heads and have the precision of a tightly unified military force – well, at least until we interfere with their mission - at which time they employ their helter skelter tactics. Semut gila … is the Malay term we used to use in Singapore to describe that running amok thing they do when they sense danger.

I used to marvel at the co-ordination needed to maneuver six legs. I have always been clumsy – if anyone is going to fall in public, it would be me. Alan says it’s something nice girls who turn into Miss Universe contestants are able to do rather well. I think it’s one of the reasons he likes Miss Australia/Universe Jennifer Hawkins so much. Jennifer is a beautiful woman, but she’s also clumsy which makes her real and like any one of us. And yes, while I was in the Pagent in Peru, I did manage to fall over while visiting Cuzco, the Andean capital of the Inca Empire. Unlike the sure-footed ants, I have achieved falling in every type of shoe imaginable. From high-school canvas badminton masters to those 1970’s wedges with criss-cross up-the-ankle ties; from my favourite Japanese slippers (rubber thongs) that I would drag my teenage feet around in, to the sexy 5 inch stilettos I used to wear to work with my cheongsams - that gave me a great strut through Collyer Quay... when I wasn't falling down that is.

My cousins Bryan and Royston used to be my constant companions when I was little. I loved them very much and used to wish I was a boy too. We would play with and collect anything that nature abundantly provided … grasshoppers, praying mantis, dragonflies, and tadpoles - the colourful tropical butterflies that used to visit the flowers that grew in Karikal Lane where our grandparents lived, and even the worms we dug out of the garden bed.

Back then, I don’t remember ever putting on shoes each time we wandered outdoors, our skins tanned and sweaty in the constant tropical heat and our bellies happily satisfied with the wonderful meals my grandma used to dish out. We often spent lazy afternoons after school on the side of the big drain that ran along the sandy lane next to the Grand Hotel which stood in white colonial splendour next to my grandparent’s home.

While the boys did their thing like catch tadpoles or tiny fish that lived in the drain, I used to watch the never ending black lines of ants – sometimes salvaging what they could from a dead dragonfly. The rainbow colours still ablaze in the transparent wings that would never fly again. Or I would try to feed a nearby grasshopper with a leaf from a different plant as it clung onto a branch of another.

And of course, if any one of us would slip and land bottom first into the filthy water, it would be me - only to be fished out by Bryan who was 3 years older and always my gallant protector. Once when I had stepped on a large rusty nail while roaming a construction site with the boys, Bryan had carried me all the way home as I clung to him, crying . For all the trouble I gave him, Bryan never once lost his temper with me.

Royston and I loved sneaking into the gardens of the Grand Hotel, and even though I am sure Bryan would come with us on occasion, my memories are mainly of Roy lifting the rusty cyclone wire fence on the side of the hotel where the staff servant quarters were, so I could crawl through. That fence was spider territory and my long hair which I never brushed, always swept clean the spiders and their webs from the fence together with the insects that were caught in them. I would then of course jump around, trying hard to maintain silence, my hands waving frantically while Roy would dust the arachnids and insects from my hair, whispering at me not to scream.

We’d then run hiding in bushes along the way, as the birds in the trees whistled and sang to each other, until we reached the large circular fountain in the middle of the garden. It was the most beautiful thing in the world to me. I loved the tessellated tiles, the cool white marble and the gentle sound of the water that fell like raindrops onto the lotus flowers and leaves in the middle pond; the bridal creeper that grew up the columns and the fragrant white flowers that bloomed. I used to have this fantasy that when I grew up, I would be married on the steps of that fountain.

Royston and I would indelibly be noticed by the Sikh Jagah (Security Guard) with the sky-blue starched turban, who would shout “Ooi!!” and come running towards us. We never understood why he always gave himself away by shouting out to us, Royston and I would eye each other, laugh out loud and say something like "Stupid!" and then like my friends the ants, employ the semut gila tactic of escape – as the Jagah tried in vain to apprehend us.

At other times we would run down the lane where outside the Catholic Convent by the sea, was an old brick gun turret from World War 2. We used to climb into it’s belly that often smelled of dead fish and crustaceans; and play war games while the waves lapped along its mossy outsides. Royston, Commanding Officer of the tiny plastic soldiers he kept safely in a box in my grandmother’s bedroom - provided a running commentary with all the sound effects. We truly lived in the moment; our lives so uncomplicated, so happy, so free.

Then in the mid-1970’s our playground began to undergo a major renovation. Teams of surveyors began to arrive – I remember watching them experiencing a sense of foreboding that something very significant was about to happen. Armies of ants and toy soldiers were soon replaced by migrant workers from neighbouring countries. We heard the adults talking - over whiskey waters and lemon squash, about reclamation and progress, about housing on a scale never seen before, about how Katong would no longer be a sleepy hollow by the sea. Damn right they were … for the sea completely disappeared in a matter of just a year with all the memories of generations before gone with the tide of progress.

Suddenly the sounds of the lapping waves and the smell of salt and seaweed were replaced by the loud pounding of steel pylons painfully rammed into the seabed and the choking, unnatural dusty smell of concrete. The beautiful white beach sand we built our sandcastles with, the garishly painted sampans (boats) and fishing nets owned by the cheeky Muslim boys with the leather brown skin that my mother always warned me about, and the coconut trees that leaned like gentle long necked giraffes over the salty blue that I would jump from … all decimated.

Large, loud machines emitting clouds of carbon monoxide broke down the old barnacled steps and sea-wall along which my grandpa used to take us for mid-morning strolls on the weekends. The multi-coloured speckled pavement - on which we would sit on 3 legged wooden stools to eat clandestinely, the salty and tangy mee-siam (rice noodles in spicy gravy) in frosted glass plates from the make-shift stalls, dished out by the smiling Malay women - was broken and taken away in trucks. I remember how I used to giggle as he would warn me each time not to tell my grandma that we had eaten the ‘outside’ food she maintained was full of fly larvae that would make us sick. Contrary to my grandma’s fears I never got sick this way ever – but the knowledge that those moments with my grandpa were gone forever left me sick with heartache as a child.

This evolving world of progress and concrete also took away the birds and insects. The butterflies and dragonflies no longer visited my grandma’s garden in their old customary fashion. The rusty wire fence was torn away together with those territorial spiders. The Grand Hotel was sliced in two, ripped through the middle of its beautifully tended gardens, to accommodate a future major roadway where bitumen would be poured over the remains of that wonderful fountain, where the lotus flowers and my romantic girl-hood fantasies would never bloom again. Sadly, my beloved playground was buried before I was ready to understand progress’s cruel treatment of childhood dreams.

I still continue to notice the smallest ants, the amazing amounts of caterpillars and butterflies, dragonflies and birds that visit or live in our garden at Oporto Rise today. The ants seem to have a rather large colony on the far left-hand side of our front yard, along our timber fence and under our paving. I see lines of them, busy getting about their daily work, stopping for their usual hellos - a society of living beings not all that different to us humans. We have not interfered with their comings and goings; they have been there for years and the brick paving in their area is an ‘antscape’ of uneven mounds of soil; excavated ant hills of undulating sand.

Over the past few months however, their underground city seems to have progressed with large developments growing in all directions. Progress comes to all creatures, big and small. They now have several subway exits all over our actual driveway and the bricks there have begun to shift slightly. Each time I swept the garden recently, I pondered on what I should do. Our philosophy is that they are outdoors where they belong; it is their home and their playground. But they were advancing rapidly suddenly and claiming areas that we utilise. As much as I love that we have co-existed together all this while – they have encroached too close into our personal space now.

In order to sustain our home and garden, we had to draw the human-line somewhere. A difficult decision was made, but I know it was not made out of any malice. For as we put on our Japanese slippers and began the reclamation process of our paving by sprinklings ‘ant dust’ onto their homes and playgrounds, on all the things familiar and dear to them, we felt tremendous compassion for them. Alan and I were doing as the Singapore government had done to a certain extent – for sustainability reasons. I felt like I was making very bad karma, but Donovan being the wise soul that he is reminded me that even His Holiness the Dalai Lama has said, that in the end, we have to be practical. As much as we do not wish to harm other living creatures, sometimes inevitably our actions will affect their lives.

I am very sorry.