The Building on Hindoo Road

This is not a street I come to very often. 

Most of the time I'm either on Syed Alwi Road passing through from Mustafa to Kitchener Road, or I'm on Rowell Road where the housing blocks are. 

But today my friend was occupied in a shop along Jalan Besar, and it being too humid to just sit on some bench and wait, I decided I'd walk around. 

After all I'd not been around this place much before.

My route this afternoon could affford to be unplanned. 

Just so long as I got to City Square on the Upper Serangoon side of Little India  it didn't matter how, or how long, I took to get there. 

So, instead of taking the familiar, I went along a road of which I didn't even know its name- until later.

I even thought this was a through road to the Upper Serangoon side.

It wasn't. 

But as I tried getting my bearings whilst seated at the void deck beneath one of the blocks, the building opposite caught my eye.

It isn't always that you have the juxtaposition of housing from two different eras on the same road together, albeit a small, quiet, non-descript one.

But there they were- on opposite sides of Hindoo Road- facing each other.

The one whose void deck I sat under was a Point high rise block painted in the colors of green, yellow and white, with lifts and plants in a center that you could possibly call a small courtyard.

The other opposite was a two storeyed block with red brick, white washed walls, a neatly tiled staircase, and huge shuttered windows that at one time would have opened outwards to the road outside. 

This block had been recently refurbished. 

And because it looked like it was open to the public, up the staircase boldly I went. 

It's a beautiful flight of stairs up to the second floor.

It's also a long one.

I remembered wondering to myself how they got all their furniture up.

And how the ladies would have to climb up with bags and baskets of groceries, possibly with children in tow. 

No wonder they say that the women of those days were tougher than us dainty princesses today.

Seeing this flight of stairs, it's possibly true. 

There wasn't anything to see in terms of interiors- all the doors (wooden) were locked, padlocked, and the windows- those that looked out to the corridor- were tightly closed too. 

To see the corridors, however, was more than enough for me.

It brought back memories of a similar corridor I had seen at Cairnhill once before.

I wondered what the dwellers placed along these corridors when they lived here.

Might there have been potted plants?

Might there have been shoe racks?

Did they plant their favorite flowers or cooking herbs?

Were there prams and children's bicycles?

It's all empty now.

But the light still shines. 

One thing about corridors in such buildings is the light. 

It's hard to describe but it's very distinctive. 

There's something about the way the light shines on the walls that bring a sense of clarity, a sense of space, a sense of places far away.

And it isn't just the glow on the walls. 

It's also the way the shadows play when the rays tilt into the building, and along the floor of the corridor. 

You can feel the poignancy. 

I don't know who the families that once dwelled here are. 

I too don't know where they've gone.

But one way or another they'd have memories of this place, good or bad. 

It's honestly impossible to forget how the air of the space feels like. 

It's also impossible to forget how the windows of the rooms on the opposite side of the corridor would look out to the backyards of the houses below.. 

And the activities- whatever took place in the backyards- I doubt the dwellers  upstairs and down would be able to simply let them go.

It might have been the charcoal stove, the large cooking pots, the potted plants, the laundry basins, or the clean laundry hanging from lines swaying gently in a hot afternoon breeze.

We do not know. 

It's often claimed that those who live in such buildings are little communities. 

I didn't use to understand.

But now- with the help of this building- and a bit of romantic imagination- well, I do agree.