I live on Rowell Road, Singapore.
I take the 65 to school, transfer to the 111. I get off on Tanglin Road and walk the windy road up to school.
On the way home, I get off at Serengoon and walk the length of Rowell Road, which I’ve come to realize is a seedier side of Singapore. Yes, Singapore does in fact have a seedy side—and I live there. I live in Government Housing in Little India. HDBs. Most locals live either in an HDB, the rest live in a condo, which usually features a pool and tennis courts (an expat’s paradise!).
Walking down Rowell Road is an experience. It’s like the red light district of Amsterdam, but not nearly as classy. Here you have tiny shops with narrow staircases separating each one. Thai massage places, storage rooms, independent hardware stores, and of course Viwawa, the karaoke bar on the corner.
The only thing separating the stairwells and the narrow, narrow sidewalks are the grated, gated doorways. Inside you can’t help but notice the scantily clad women sitting, waiting, taunting the men who pass by. I’ve seen men lined up to get a glimpse of these women. I’ve never seen one go inside.
Now we all know that Singapore is a “clean” city, a “safe” city—in Singapore, everyone has a home. That may or may not be, but, what I do know is, I often have to step around the men sleeping on the ground in order to get to my flat at night.
Little India is a lively place, a crowded place, one of the few places in Singapore that has, what I like to call, “character.” You can see this character as you walk down the bustling streets at night and look above at the festive lights that hang over the neighborhood. You can feel this “character” as you try to maneuver your way through the 24 hour Mustafa Centre, just so you can buy a roll of toilet paper. You can smell this character as you sniff the aromas of the fruits and vegetable stands, and take in the spices from the local North and South Indian, and Malay restaurants. And you can hear this character as you listen to the drumming beats off in the distance.
Every Sunday, Little India is transformed. See, Singapore has a labour workforce that is largely populated by Indian émigrés. Singapore, is said to be a place where all cultures converge into one. But I find it’s not always rainbows and harmony and unity and oneness, though the powers that be are seeking to make a more fluid “Singapore” identity. This is difficult when you have so many peoples from different ethnicity's who identify so strongly with their own culture. Singapore isn’t a melting pot by any means, it’s just a city that happens to house Malay, Chinese, Indians, Expats, etc, but I find there’s not much integration among the various ethnicity's. And it becomes clearest when you take a look at the housing market. Not that there’s overt animosity, just not as much inter-mingling as you would think.
But back to Little India. Sunday is the labourers’ one day off, so every Sunday Little India transforms into a hub of activity. When I first looked at this apartment, it was a Sunday night. I remember I had to get out of the taxi before the end of the street, because the cabby couldn’t drive down the road, it was swarmed with people. Almost as if it was Mardi Gras or something. But it was just a regular Sunday. Men are chatting, drinking, sitting outside the HDBs, lined throughout the street wandering, relaxing. Hundreds, thousands of men. And there are no women. Most of the men come to Singapore to work and send money home to the families they left behind. It is therefore sometimes awkward being a single lady in Little India. Especially since I stand out as a Westerner. I get gawked at, stared at, grunted at (yes, I’ve heard a lot of strange sounds come out of people who pass by). At first, I paid no attention to it, but as it became a constant thing, it’s sometimes hard to ignore. Now I find myself always walking with a sort of determination to get to my destination instead of lingering along the way. It’s too bad, because I like to soak in the ambiance of a place, but I find I wont get anywhere if I maintain my usual casual attitude as I walk through the streets.
Another gem of Little India is the Mustafa Center. I have a love-hate relationship with this place. Every time I walk into this surreal world, part of me thinks that Mustafa is the devil, and yet, there’s something utterly alluring about the place! Mustafa is a 24 hour, 7 day a week shopping center. The aisles are narrow and the place is constantly packed. The later you go, the harder to breathe. And this place sells everything. I challenge you to find something the Mustafa center doesn’t have. The only problem is, while they have everything, anyone who works there will deny any knowledge of having anything at all. The place is not organized in any logical layout, and if you ask, say, ten people for a pair of gloves, half of the staff will tell you they don’t sell it, and the other half will send you in five different directions to where the gloves supposedly are located. And when you finally find the gloves, they’re in the most random spot, like in between kitchenware and electronics. Go figure.
My favorite part about Mustafa is the 24 hour café, where you can get crappy food at all hours of the day, my favorite being the breakfast in the morning. For $3.50 Sing you can get eggs, hashbrown, Kaya Toast (my favorite!) and kopi (coffee) or teh (tea). But Mustafa is yet another place in which you have to see it to believe it.
Come take a trip to Rowell Road. Visit me in Singapore. I’ll give you the grand tour!
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