N. Narayanan : my life in 1930s Singapore (Part 1) : Schooling

Schooling At 84, Mr N Narayanan is a sprightly gentleman. He moves like someone decades younger. Still sporting an impish grin when he smiles, you can imagine the mischief he got into when he was younger. Much, much younger. Mr Narayanan was born in December, 1927. "I remember playing with my friend, running through those giant pipes they had when they were building Clemenceau Avenue," he recalls, of his childhood spent living near that well-known Singaporean avenue named after a French Prime Minister. Home then was at Cuppage Road near Cavenagh Road end. When he was four, his dad, concerned that this third child and first-born son of his might be too playful and idle for his own good, enrolled him into a private creche. At the time few parents did or could afford that. The creche was run by two daughters of a traditional Indian medicine man, someone akin to the sinseh in traditional Chinese medicine or TCM. His name was Naidu. The place was where the former Red Sea Aquarium shop once stood opposite Rendezvous Hotel at Dhoby Ghaut. "Naidu was into Ayurvedic medicine and sold or distributed stuff to cleanse the body," remembers Mr Narayanan. "The shop was full of herbs and our lessons were conducted in a back room. We learnt ABC, sang songs, and ran around. There were four of us in the creche then, and I think his daughters were paid $2 each a month - a sum that went quite a long way at the time." His father, Mr Narayana Iyer, placed a premium on education. "He had some secondary school education but did not go further. Like most parents then, he wanted his children to have what he didn't manage to achieve," recalls a grateful Mr Narayanan. His own two elder sisters were sent to study at the CEZMS mission school at Sophia Road on Mount Emily. "That was the Church of England Zenana Mission School. But we used to joke and call it the Crocodile, Elephant, Zebra Monkey school," laughs Mr Narayanan, clearly chuffed at the memory. After CEZMS, both his sisters then went on to Raffles Girls School. However, only one sister sat for her Senior Cambridge exam which she passed in 1940. His eldest sister, on the other hand, at age thirteen and a half, got married in India, returned to school at RGS and later returned to India when her Indian husband came to Singapore for her. That prematurely ended her studies in 1938. Mr Narayanan's father came to Singapore in 1911, soon after finishing his secondary schooling. He was just seventeen and a half years of age. Says Mr Narayanan: "Back in those days, once you reach that age, you were expected to work to contribute to family income. My dad decided to seek his income in Singapore." In school, the late Mr Iyer received training as a typist in school. Shorthand and bookkeeping were optional subjects. The objective then was so the school-leavers could find jobs as stenographers and bookkeepers. The typing taught were the two-finger approach, before touch typing was introduced. After arriving in Singapore, Mr Iyer soon found work as a clerk at a rubber plantation some 40km away in Johor, Malaysia. He was able to speak English and found himself useful as a go-between the ang-moh (white) plantation owners and the immigrant Indian coolies. As his work became indispensable, Mr Iyer later found himself enroute to Singapore to work in his boss's new rubber brokerage firm. As the fortunes of the RS Stanton Nelson Co., grew, so did Mr Iyer's own. Before long, he got married and settled down in Singapore. When Mr Narayanan was six and a half years old, his dad took him to McNair School to begin formal schooling. Because of his creche education, he was found competent by the school and was immediately placed in Primary Two instead of One. Because of this, years on, he remained always the youngest student in his class. Physically, he was smaller than his peers too. According to Mr Narayanan, education in those times consisted of two years in Primary, seven years in Standard and then one year each in Junior and Senior Cambridge. He says: "The Senior Cambridge would be the equivalent of our present O-Levels." He remembers that the Junior Cambridge year was converted to Standard 8 in 1939. "A common text back then was the Malayan Reader. There was one for each Standard. After we finished with the books we would bring to Bras Brasah to sell them to the second-hand bookshop dealers there." A common character in those Reader stories was Chong Beng. "It was Chong Beng this, Chong Beng that. Usually the stories would have a moral," recalls Mr Narayanan with some fondness. When at Bras Brasah, he would drop by the Raffles library, which would later become the National library. "The library was then divided into Junior and Senior sections. I naturally spent my time at the Junior section." Although there was a system to the education then, staying at one school was often not the case. The better students (often in the A & B classes) were 'streamed' off to the better schools. In his time, the better government schools were either Raffles Institution or Victoria School. The good private ones were St Andrews, St Joseph Institution or Anglo-Chinese. "In 1934, I was in class 2B at McNair. In the next year, in Std 1, I was streamed to Rangoon Road School, where in subsequent years I studied in Std 2A and Std 3A classes. At the end of that, the best 10 students were again streamed to go to Raffles Institution. As Victoria School was starting a Std 4 class, we all got streamed to VS instead. That year was 1938," says Mr Narayanan, of his rather nomadic school years. What was school like then? Did they have the same holiday breaks as kids today? "Some schools differentiated their students with their sessions. The brighter students were taught in the morning session, whilst the strugglers were taught in the afternoon sessions. If you were in the afternoon session, other students might perceive you as 'goondu'", says Mr Narayanan, the last word meaning 'stupid' in colloquial Singlish. "We had three class exams and three breaks; a fortnight around Easter, one month mid-term and six weeks at year-end." In 1938, Victoria School was already the concrete building it is today. In September 2011, Mr Narayanan attended the school's 135th anniversary at the old school premises, now defunct. He misses the old atmosphere. "When I was studying there, the place was very lively. On one side, you have pigs squealing from an abattoir. On the other side a saw mill. Around the school, hawkers would be calling out selling their wares. In time you just learn to tune out all that noise." He recalls his class population then to be one-third Malay, one-third Chinese, one-third Indian and a couple of Eurasians. "And we all had to speak English in the school compound, which was secured by trellis fencing with barbed wire on top." In sports, the students at Victoria were very competitive. "We were grouped into four 'houses' such as Lion House, Tiger House, Panther House and Bear House. We students were every loyal to our own house, especially during inter-house sports. But as Victorians there was no doubt about our unity when pitted against other schools," recalls an animated Mr Narayanan. During that time, he also remembers that sports also included fortnightly swimming lessons at the YMCA pool at Canning Rise. On Fridays, Muslim students were given an hour off to attend to mosque prayers. Though Mr Narayanan obviously enjoyed his time at Victoria School, his studies there came to an abrupt halt when WWII approached. "I was in Standard 7 at the time. My dad felt it was safer for us to be in India, so he packed the whole family and sent us off. It was then May 1941." Mr Narayanan's father chose to stay behind. "He had spent 30 years of his life building up so much. And he had become rather prominent too. So he decided to stay behind. But he too left to join us the next year in February, just before Singapore fell to the Japanese." Back in India, although the war did not touch them directly, the family too went through the privations of war. Mr Narayanan resumed his studies. "Paper was in short supply. I remember squeezing my writing three lines into one. I wasn't sure I could even read, let alone see my own handwriting!" chuckles Mr Narayanan as he recalls his tiny squiggles. Later he realised that he actually liked to write small. He went on to earn a degree. After the war, Mr Narayanan's father returned alone to Singapore in December, 1946. Two years later, he asked his first-born son, Mr Narayanan to join him. But just as Mr Narayanan was about to board a ship for Singapore, he received news that his father had suddenly passed away of a heart attack the night before. "He was outside Jade Mansion at Nassim Road after an office party. He was the managing director of the company then." Mr Narayanan had no choice but to disembark and return home to perform the obligatory funerary rites. It was not until December that same year that he left for Singapore. "Unfortunately, many degrees from India were not recognised at the time except for a veterinary one. But learning was something instilled in me by my father," says Mr Narayanan. He tried to learn, but he was neither very good at typing nor shorthand. So he decided to try his hand at stock broking. He became successful at that. As a matter of fact, he was the first Indian stockbroker in Singapore. Not surprising, given that his own father, Mr Narayana Iyer, was the first Indian rubber broker in the same far away nation that they both had left for from a village in Kerala, India that many years ago.