It has been a couple of years since the last time I dropped in here. Why I'd come here then, I don't remember. Maybe it was because I'd heard Blk 6A Margaret Drive was going to be demolished. Maybe it was because I'd heard of this place so much, even talked about it from time to time, yet never got to visit it.
As it turned out I was too late then.
The other blocks had long been demolished, and even Blk 6A- the reason for my visit there- had had her staircases boarded up and sealed.
A good thing it is then that parts of the (old) Queenstown neighborhood still remain. Amidst the towers of new flats now (still) under construction, amidst the new roads that have been newly paved, there stand little pockets of green that remind us visitors of what it was which no longer remain.
Honestly, I had no idea what it was I was going to see.
I just knew that I was curious about Kay Siang Road, and that I wanted to see where the road would end.
And so on one cloudy, sultry afternoon I walked my way on the Tanglin Road stretch, turned into Kay Siang Road, and kept my way on. Nothing specific there was that I was looking for, but near a school for special needs, behind a nursing home I found a large field.
Nice it would have been had the town planners of early Queenstown kept the land as a meadow reminiscent of meadows on native British soil, but of course, a quick look through her history will tell you of a purpose otherwise.
That purpose- the Queenstown Remand Prison- is gone now. All that remains of her vast presence is this field- for now. What it will be in the future, we don't yet know, but surely the land will be repurported, and so until then, may this field be a memory to all who entered its gates, all who left it, and all who were in there for one reason or another,
It hasn't been documented much, but the limited land space meant that town planners had to put the proximity between the prison and the town astoundingly near. Less than 400m away from the walls were the Queenstown Library, the Queenstown Market, the Queenstown Polyclinic and the Queenstown Cinema.
Two lifestyles- so near, yet so far.
What was it like living in the shadow of the prison walls? What was it like living outside the shadow of the prison walls? Was it constantly in their minds? Was it put at the back of their minds? Did they know anyone inside? Did they wish they could be nearer to the one that was inside? What did they see when they looked out from the windows of their flats in the quiet of the night? What did they think of when they walked past the place on their way to school, to the library, to the polyclinic, to the market, to the cinema?
What do they remember now?
Questions there are, no doubt, answers there are, no doubt too.
But are they important?
Maybe, maybe not.
However, I wasn't here this afternoon to dwell on questions (or answers) that I didn't need to know.
I came to have a walkaround and a lookabout.
So I made a quick drop-in to the airconditioned Queenstown Library, got a book, looked at the trees (and birds) outside the window, waited a while for the squirrels, and when there were none, went off on my own little merry way, cutting through the long curve of Ridout Road, Pierce Road, and finally back to civilization at Holland Road.