THE BASE SOCCER 'NUTS'

 Bargadi to Brisbane - Part 2

2  :INDIA TO SINGAPORE (1937-41)

 

My father Hakam Singh (1908-1997) was born in India in a farming family in a small village in the state of Punjab, called Sukhanand, which is in the district of Moga. That is where he grew up and got married to my mother Harnam Kaur.

He did not have much of an education as education was not a priority during the time when he was growing up. Most villages did not even have schools.  Farming was the primary source of income back then in the Punjab, as it is even until today.

My father quickly realised that the little land that he would inherit would hardly be enough to generate enough income for him to raise a family.

 

He began to look for opportunities to give his family a better life and soon came to know that the British were looking for individuals who were willing to work for them in the army or police in British colonies.

Fortunately he had a sister who was already in living in Singapore and that was a good enough reason for him to consider moving to Singapore. But he had no money to travel to Singapore nor did he have any land that he could sell to raise funds. The only possession that he had was a cow, which he decided to sell for fifty rupees to buy his passage to Singapore.  This was in 1935 when he was  barely 27 years old.

 Upon arrival in Singapore, he stayed with his sister who was married to a policeman. During the few weeks that he spent with them, they tried to persuade him to  join the police force. He however refused, saying that he wanted his time after work to be his, and did not want to end up saluting officers after working hours! He felt that a life in uniform was not for him as there would be pressure from his seniors at all times.

 As there were no other suitable jobs available in Singapore, he travelled to Kuala Lumpur and began doing manual work in a tin mine. It was hard work, but he was able to accumulate some savings.

 After a couple of years, he returned to his village in Punjab as most men used to do during those days.

When my father returned to his village he was almost thirty years old, and still single. During those days, it was customary for parents to get their children married during their early twenties. By those standards, my father's marriage was long overdue. His parents accordingly wasted no time in finding him a bride and they did not have to go very far to do that.

My mother, Harnam Kaur (1912- 1985) was the only child and was born and raised in the nearby village of Bargadi, which was just twelve km away from my father's village of Sukhanand. Her mother had died at the time of her birth, and she was raised by members of her extended family.

Soon after getting married, my father returned to Kuala Lumpur leaving my mother behind in India. 

 

 

  

 

 Map of my paternal and maternal villages in Punjab 

During those days, very few men could afford to bring their wives and families with them to Singapore or Malaya, due to the cost and the uncertainty of getting a job that paid well enough to raise their family. What most of them did was to work for a few years in Singapore and return to India after that to arrange for their wives and children to join them in Singapore. 
As was the tradition during those days in the Punjab, women would return to their own village just before delivery and give birth there. I was born in my mother's village of Bargadi. As no birth certificates were issued in India during those days, the exact date of my birth is unknown. The date of birth that appears in all my official records could very well be off not just by a few days or weeks but even by a few months!

My father was in Kuala Lumpur when I was born. While In Kuala Lumpur, he got wind that the British were in the process of setting a Naval Base in Singapore and that they needed workers to work for them in the Naval Base. He wasted no time in moving back to Singapore very quickly got employed as a trainee crane driver by the British in the Naval Base. Within a year or so he became a fully-fledged crane diver at the new dry dock in Naval Base.

He drove the biggest crane (a 30 tonner), which was very high and as my father too was  tall, his friends gave him the name of  "panjang" which was the closest word in Malay  to refer to someone as "lanky". He continued to work on the very same crane till he retired in 1968.

By 1941 my father had managed to save enough money to pay for the passage for my mother and me to travel from India to Singapore. We travelled on the SS Rajula and arrived in the Naval Base in November 1941.

We were extremely fortunate to be able to board the ship in India as this was the last ship to leave India before the Japanese attacked Malaya and Singapore. The Japanese invaded Malaya in December 1941, and they were in Singapore by February 1942.

As was usual those days, teenagers were sent with relatives to Singapore for a better life. When my mother and I came to Singapore, my father's elder brother sent his second son with us. He was about 13 years old. With considerable difficulty my father looked after him during the Japanese Occupation. However, after about 3 months, he suddenly disappeared, and we could not find him. There was a rumour that he lived in a Chinese village at 12th milestones. At the end of the war he suddenly appeared at home again! My father decided to enroll him into the Naval police force by increasing his age by 2 years, to meet the requirement for minimal age. He began living at the Sikh Temple which was set up by the British. He did well and was called "Kitchie" , meaning "small" in Malay and ended up as a sergeant. He later immigrated to Vancouver in 1972 together with his 5 children all of whom live there now.

About the same time as my father left India, another distant cousin of his from the same village came to Singapore. After the war he worked at Naval Base as a bus driver with an excellent safety record. He was Nahar Singh, the father of Milo Swang who is well known for her running the Facebook page called 'Old Sembawang Naval Base Nostalgic Lane' After Japanese occupation Mr Nahar Singh was given a bus drivers job in NB. He took British children to school in NB as well as City Schools. His other duty was to take patients who could not be treated at NB Asian hospital, to The General Hospital in Outram Road.

After the Japanese attacked and occupied Singapore in February 1942, they hired my father to do the same work and after the Japanese surrendered and left Singapore in September 1945, he got reinstated to do the same work by the British on the very same crane.