The name Killiney Road brings back memories of a period in my childhood (around 1957) in which my family lived in one bedroom of a huge mansion situated in Killiney Road. The house had seen better days when it was a stately home of a wealthy Peranakan family. Part of the house was damaged during World War Two when the Japanese dropped bombs into Singapore. The landlady leased out the rooms which come with a small living area to various families.
The motely inhabitants included two sisters who were orphaned and brought up by an old servant, a couple with one daughter (the wife was a devout Buddhist who would spend most of her time chanting the sutra and dressed in a black gown), as well as a family of five – parents, two daughters and a mother-in-law. The man was a filial son to his mother, good husband and devoted father to the children – an exemplary person to emulate. In contrast to this family there was another family in which the husband, a coolie, turned out to be a wife basher. Occasionally we would hear his wife screaming because of the beating which could have been generated from daughter mother-in-law dispute and the son listening to the whisperings of his mother. Our immediate neighbour was a family in which the wife would give birth every other year. The child birth would take place in her bedroom with a mid- wife in attendance. As a child I could hear the groaning from the lady as she went into labour.
The rental that each family paid included the use of a communal kitchen and toilet. Each family would be given a space to place a kerosene stove and some house hold paraphernalia. The occasional fire caused by someone’s carelessness was not unusual. Someone would shout “fire!” and whoever was around would scurry to douse the flame.
If sharing a common kitchen is bad, sharing a common toilet is worse. For that matter, each family would have a spittoon in their room to be emptied each morning. People would rather use the toilet in the day, so it was common to have a queue of three to four waiting to enter one cubicle. When it got too urgent one of us would plead to be let in ahead of others.
Electricity was available but the supply was often erratic. Because of the overloading of power supply a short circuit would occur plunging the whole mansion into darkness. As this happened so often families would be equipped with kerosene lamps or oil lamps. Candles were also used. Once it happened during our examination period and my sister and I ended up studying into the night using candle light. The flickering of the flame and dripping of wax never failed to fascinate me as a child. It ignited my imagination and gave rise to my proliferation of another realm – a world of make-believe.
Family quarrels within and among the families were frequent. The bickering was usually triggered by snide remarks from a jealous neighbour. Sometimes quarrels would escalate into fights and the police had to be called.
As the mansion continued to age, roofs would leak during heavy thunder storms. To encounter this, residents would arm themselves with buckets and pails to collect the rain water and spread rags around to absorb the water. During those thunder and lightning filled nights my imagination would go wild. Stories of ‘Pontianaks’ (female ghosts that ply banana trees) and ‘Orang Minyak’ or Oily man (a man who rapes young ladies and would smear himself with oil to evade being caught) would resurface causing me to cower under the blanket.
After paying their monthly rental many families could hardly make ends meet. For that, the landlady was kind enough not to raise their rental. However there is a price to be paid. It was at the expense of living in a dilapidated mansion as she refused to pay for repairs.
Today, the mansion and its surrounding area have been replaced by sprawling condominiums and commercial buildings. Living in Killiney Road today is beyond the means of the average wage earner.
