The Silver Chariot returns

A set of photographs taken stop points along the procession route of the Silver Chariot. The procession takes place on the eve of the festival of Hindu festival of Panguni Uthiram which is celebrated on the full moon of the Tamil month of Panguni. Since 1967, a kavadi procession, similar to that during the more well known Thaipusam festival, has taken place in the Sembawang area, organised by the Holy Tree Sri Balasubramaniar Temple. The temple was original established in the Naval Base off Canberra Road and moved to its current location at Yishun Industrial Park A in 1996. The chariot is a representation of the chariot in which Lord Murugan or Lord Balasubramaniar is believed to use on his annual visit to his devotees on Earth. The procession this year takes place along a new route starting at a vacant plot of land off Canberra Lane / Canberra Drive. Photographs of the preparations for kavadi bearers from the previous years as well as more information on the festival can be found on two of my previous posts: A lesser known Hindu festival with a Kavadi procession: Panguni Uthiram (2011) and The sun rises on a Sembawang tradition.

The largest dock east of the Suez in the midst of a world that is to change

Tucked in the far north of the island of Singapore is a huge 86 hectare shipyard which seems far out of place. Its location is far from the large concentration of shipyards and related industries which has grown in the far west of Singapore. The shipyard, Sembawang Shipyard, today stands as a physical reminder of a legacy left by the former colonial masters of Singapore. The British operated the yard as a Naval Dockyard which was an important component of a huge naval base which had stretched some six and a half kilometres along the northern coast from Woodlands (close to where the Causeway is) to Sembawang (the eastern boundary ran along the northern end of Sembawang Road from its junction with Canberra Road to where Sembawang Park is today).

An aerial view of the Naval Dockyard in 1962 (Image: Horatio J. Kookaburra on Flickr). The former Stores Basin can be seen on the lower left of the photo and the King George VI dock can be seen close to the top right. Three floating docks are today tied up along a finger pier constructed off the 850 metre northwall. The northwall is seen running along the lower edge of the photo.

The dockyard and the base was for a long time, an important source of employment in Singapore. A report in 1961 put the local workforce of the dockyard at 10,700, with the base accounting for as much as 20% of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of Singapore. What this did mean was that when the accelerated pullout of the British forces was announced in 1968, there were huge concerns, not only from a security viewpoint, but also on unemployment. As part of the arrangements made in the lead-up to the pullout, the dockyard was transferred to the Singapore government for a token $1 in 1968. Sembawang Shipyard Pte. Ltd. was established on 19th of June that year and a British commercial shipyard, Swan Hunter roped in to manage the transition of the yard to a commercial one.

The Dockyard’s gates seen in the 1960s (source: http://www.singas.co.uk). The Naval Dockyard had been a major source of employment in Singapore. The local workforce in 1961 numbered some 10,700.

A key component of the transition was in training the local workforce, not just on the ground but also management staff to eventually take-over the running of the yard. Besides Swan Hunter, the British Ministry of Defence also seconded some 150 Naval Officers and civilians in the first year to ensure that the transition from a naval dockyard to a commercial one, over the three years it was to take the pullout to be completed, would go smoothly. The arrival of the first commercial ship came in March 1969 and by the time the year had ended, Sembawang Shipyard had docked some 66 merchant vessels and was well on its way to becoming a leading ship repair yard. The success of the shipyard was one of Singapore’s early success stories and by 1978, the tenth anniversary of the yard, a mainly local management team was in place to run the yard. The yard also introduced a highly successful apprenticeship programme in 1972 – from which many of the skilled labour and second generation supervisory staff were to come from and was key in not just raising skills levels, but also in improving productivity of the local workforce necessary to become competitive in the ship repair market.

The view of the northern area of the shipyard from the jetty at Beaulieu House. The three floating docks can be seen on either side of a finger pier off the northwall: KFD Dock on the outside on the extreme right; President Dock on the inside (with the ship on which the funnel is seen); and Republic Dock to the left of President Dock.

The yard as we see today, has seen a huge expansion in its capacity with the addition of many facilities since it inherited the already well equipped dockyard in 1968. In addition to the King George VI graving dock (referred to affectionately as ‘KG6′), which when it was completed in 1938 was described as the largest graving dock east of the Suez (and the largest naval graving dock in the world – more on it can be found in a previous post on the Naval Base), the yard now has a huge 400,000 DWT capacity graving dock – Premier Dock built next to KG6, as well as three large floating docks. Premier Dock was an early addition to the yard, having been completed in 1975 at a cost of $50 million and opened by the then Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew. Plans for the huge dock which measures some 384 metres in length and is 64 metres wide, built to meet a demand for the repair of huge Very Large Crude Carriers (VLCC) which were being constructed, were drawn up as early as in 1968, although the go-ahead was only given in 1972. The 150,000 DWT President Floating Dock which was one of the largest floating docks in Asia at the time was added in 1981.

A photograph of KG6 with the Queen Mary docked in it in August 1940 (source: Australian War Memorial – ‘Copyright expired – public domain’).

The sheer size of yard can probably only be fully appreciated attempting to walk from its entrance at Admiralty Road West to the far end of it located just west of the former Stores Basin of the Naval Base (now used by the US Navy as a logistics base) – an end which is visible from the old jetty at Beaulieu House. It does take a good half an hour to 45 minutes to do just that – an effort that I regularly had to make to get to Berths 8 and 9 of the yard during the six long months I spent undergoing training at the yard in 1983/1984 (so much so that many of us ended up bringing our own bicycles to reduce the effort). That six months is probably one that was for me best forgotten – the slump in demand for ship repair then meant many hours spent squatting in a designated area when there was no work assigned to the work gangs we were attached to. Tea-time was always a time to look forward to then – it provided that much needed break in monotony. As trainees, one of the tasks assigned was to head to kiosks located at strategic locations along the wharf sides to buy pre-packed packets of tea and coffee as well as snacks for the rest of the gang.

HMS Bulwark off the northwall of the Naval Base in the 1960s – the northwall is where the far end of the shipyard is today (source: http://www.acig.org/artman/publish/article_203.shtml).

The yard, besides being the location of a historically significant graving dock, is also where a conserved building in the form of the former Sembawang Fire Station can be found in. While it does look like the yard is a long time fixture in the area and so the future of this historical part of Sembawang is quite safe, we do know that the winds of change is right now sweeping across large parts of the area close by. The expansion of Yishun town and Sembawang town will bring high-rise developments that will do much to alter a unique character and charm that has been associated with the area since the days of the Naval Base. The area to the east of the yard is itself undergoing a tremendous change. A renewal programme will see the park feel a lot less like the quiet corner many like me had found an escape in, and more like any other overly manicured seaside spot in Singapore. That does I suppose does complement the private development just to its east. That development will see a shoreline where idyllic seaside kampungs could once be enjoyed and a shoreline I have continued to find an escape in, become a place in which that charm will no longer be found.

The shoreline along the former Kampong Wak Hassan is one of the last escapes from the overly manicured world we now find ourselves in we will soon lose.

The sun rises on a Sembawang tradition

The Panguni Uthiram festival is a Hindu festival that is celebrated annually during the full moon of the Tamil month of Panguni. In Singapore, this is celebrated at the Holy Tree Sri Balasubramaniar Temple, now located at Yishun Industrial Park A. The celebration of the festival in the area traces its history back to 1967 when the temple was located off Canberra Road which was then part of the Royal Navy Naval Base in Sembawang. More information can be found on a previous post, A lesser known Hindu festival with a Kavadi procession: Panguni Uthiram, and also on the Holy Tree Sri Balasubramaniar Temple’s website.

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Photographs taken at Sunrise today of this year’s Panguni Uthiram

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A lesser known Hindu festival with a Kavadi procession: Panguni Uthiram

Photographs of Panguni Uthiram 2012: The sun rises on a Sembawang tradition

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My first encounters with the Panguni Uthiram festival which is celebrated annually during the full moon of the Tamil month of Panguni would have been at the time when I was doing a stint in Sembawang Shipyard in the 1980s. One of the few temples in Singapore that celebrates the festival, the Holy Tree Sri Balasubramaniar Temple had then been located in a clearing off Canberra Road on which I would pass through on a daily basis on the way to and from the shipyard from where I was residing in Ang Mo Kio, and was the end point of a much shorter Kavadi procession that would take place with the festival. That then took a route starting from where the laundry shop was at the junction of Canberra and Ottawa Roads, down Canberra Road, left into Dehli Road and into Kowloon Road before continuing back up Canberra Road and ending at the temple.

The Panguni Uthiram Kavadi procession takes place annually on the full moon of the Tamil month of Panguni. The procession used to take place along a route that included Canberra Road, Dehli Road and Kowloon Road within the old Royal Navy Naval Base up until the 1990s when the Holy Tree Sri Balasubramaniar Temple moved from Canberra Road to Yishun Industrial Park A.

Young participants at this year's procession.

I guess it was a little too early for one of the boys ...

Up to that point in time, I had only been aware of the maybe more publicised and highly visible Kavadi procession that took place down Serangoon Road, Selegie Road, Clemenceau Avenue and Tank Road every Thaipusam, and it came as a surprise to me that there was another one that took place after Thaipusam in what was then a world far removed from the one that I had known as a schoolboy in the heart of the city.

A Vel Kavadi carried during the procession. Up to the 1980s, it was something that I was familiar seeing only during the Thaipusam festival.

Panguni Uthiram is celebrated in March or April in which the month of Panguni coincides with. Based on information from various sites, I understand that the full moon of the month is chosen as the star Uthiram and Pournami which is the full moon are seen together, and the festival commemorates the marriage of several deities which include Parvati and Parameshwaran, as well as Murugan and Deivanai. The Holy Tree Sri Balasubramaniar Temple’s website also provides an indication of when the festival was first celebrated there, which was in 1967 during which six carried the Kavadi in honor of Lord Murugan who is also known as Sri Balasubramaniar. The temple has since moved (in 1996), to its current location in Yishun Industrial Park A, and the procession, which is preceeded on the eve of the full moon by a chariot procession during which a chariot, a representation of the chariot in which Sri Balasubramaniar is believed to use on his annual visit to his devotees on Earth, now takes place along Sembawang Road, close to the area where Sembawang Village was, down Canberra Link and on to the new temple site at Yishun, a distance of about one and a half kilometres.

The starting point for this year's procession on Sembawang Road, across from Durban Road - the route now moves down Sembawang Road, turning left along Canberra Link on to the site of the new temple.

The festival took place on 19 March this year, and it being a Saturday, I had the opportunity to catch it along Sembawang Road at the break of dawn and again in the evening when I was able to also observe some of the preparations made by the participants at the marquee at the holding area which was across Sembawang Road from Durban Road. It was certainly a humbling experience seeing an extreme act of faith in action and so caught up was I in it that I somehow forgot about the time staying an longer than I had originally planned to and only realising it after an hour beyond the time I had planned to leave had passed. On the evidence of what I saw and the thousands that had participated in one way or another, the festival is still very much alive, as it had been when I had first come across it a quarter of a century ago.

I was able to observe some of the preparations this year ...

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Photographs taken during the 2011 Panguni Uthiram procession in Sembawang

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Arriving to the light of the rising sun.

The crowd at the preparation area at the break of the day.

Setting off with Kavadis of Milk Pots.

An early Vel Kavadi bearer.

Two ladies carrying Milk Pots.

More Milk Pot bearers making their way down Sembawang Road.

Moving a Vel Kavadi into the preparation area.

Potrait of a Vel kavadi bearer.

A participant offering a gift.

Another participant bearing a Vel Kavadi.

The face of a participant.

Another participant preparing to have his chariot "allagu" Kavadi attached to hooks on his back.

Attaching the chariot ...

A Vel Kavadi.

Vels ...

A participant having Vels attached to his body.

Ready to go ...

A drummer at the preparation area ... use of drums and other musical instruments are now banned along the procession route.

Another Vel Kavadi bearer ready to go.

Attaching a Vel.

Piercing the end of Vels into the skin.

Blessing with fire.

A Kavadi bearer in a trance like state.

Milk Pot Kavadi bearers receiving blessings before setting off.

The face of a participant having hooks attached to his back.

A Milk Pot bearer with her tongue pierced with a Mounam Kavadi (Silent Kavadi).

A blessing along the procession route.

A young participant bearing a Kavadi.

Portrait of Vel Kavadi bearer.

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More information on the Holy Tree Sri Balasubramaniar Temple, its history and the history of the temple’s celebration of Panguni Uthiram as well as photographs of the original temple off Canberra Road can be found at the temple’s website at this link.

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