Hujan Datang, Kambing Lari

The rain brings a freshness to the day, a welcome relief to the sweltering heat of tropical Singapore. As a child I imagined the trees dancing in glee and laughing as the rain fell. As a child I also enjoyed playing in the rain, splashing through puddles of water, often arriving home drenched, my white school shoes soaked brown with muddy water, much to the consternation of my mother and my grandmother.

A rhyme my granmother would recite each time it rained rings through my head with the rain – it starts with the line “Hujan datang, kambing lari”, which translates to “(as) the rain comes, the goat runs (away)”. Besides this I remember the shouts of “hor lai lor” or “rain is coming” in Hokkien, puncturing the air, followed by the commotion of the neighbours’ scampering to bring their laundry in and the shutting of windows. Often with the wind, you would also hear the sound of doors slamming shut.

The Rain

Flooding was a common occurance in Singapore then. The vantage point offered by the flat in which I lived in provided views of the flooding of the low lying areas around Toa Payoh, especially by the banks of the Kallang River which ran through Potong Pasir, a farming area adjoining Toa Payoh. There was one occasion when there was massive flooding and from the flat, we could only see the roofs of the houses in Potong Pasir,and through the binoculars, pink carcasses of pigs floating amidst the debris.

I have on several occasions, been caught in a flood, as well. I attended a kindergarten in a low area along the banks of the Rochor canal along Kampong Java Road. I remember my father having to wade waist deep in the flood waters as he ferried me to the car, when he picked me up from the kindergarten on one occasion. Drainage in Singapore has certainly improved tremendously over the three decades that followed and flooding isn’t as common as it was back then.

The rain also provided me with some frightening moments, with lightning having struck an area of the sea where some of my friends and I were playing in moments before. When I was in Secondary 2, I had a lucky escape in the rain at the junction of Waterloo Street and Bras Basah Roads. It was one of those days when I had technical classes at the McNair Road Technical Institute and having had lunch at the Waterloo Street sarabat stalls in between technical classes in the morning and regular classes at school in the afternoon, I was making my way back to school when the heavy downpour had eased somewhat. With the light at the pedestrian crossing on Waterloo Street at its junction with Bras Basah Road in my favour, I had started to dash across from the sheltered five foot way of the shophouses to get across to the other side of the road where school was, when at the corner of my eye, I saw a car turning left from Bras Basah Road. I tried to stop, but too late, my momentum had already taken me onto the crossing, and before I could blink my eye, I was staring at up at the bumper of the car! I had slipped as the braking car was about to hit me and somehow, I had landed on the road partially underneath the car without any part of the car touching me. The driver rushed out to check on me, and I remember telling him that I was okay. He did offer to bring me to the hospital to check that all was well, but other than the shock of realising what had happened and a wet and dirty school uniform, I was indeed alright!

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