1953. Tan Wei Meng walks seven kilometres from
Kallang kampong to Raffles Institution daily,
his shoes patched with rubber from his father’s
old cycle tyre. He wins the Colonial Scholarship
not for brilliance alone—but because the British
need a Chinese boy who speaks proper English,
smiles at white officers, and doesn’t ask why
his mother cleans their toilets.
He meets Leila Rahman at the library’s back
shelf, where the air smells of damp paper and
jasmine from her sari. She’s Malay, daughter of
a retired Malay Regiment sergeant. They trade
books under the table—Shakespeare for Malay
folktales stitched into her mother’s prayer mat.
No words pass between them. Only fingers
brushing, only eyes holding too long.
The HDB flat they’re assigned in Toa Payoh has
no lift. The walls are thin. His mother sings
Tamil lullabies at night; hers chants Quranic
verses. The estate manager, exIndian Army, posts
notices: No fraternisation between scholarship
recipients and local girls of nonEnglish lineage.
Dismissal follows breach.
One night, Wei Meng slips past curfew—11pm, the
same hour his father was shot by Japanese
soldiers in ’42 for being caught near a British
barracks. He climbs the fire escape to Leila’s
fifthfloor flat. She leaves the window open. A
single oil lamp flickers. He holds her hand.
Outside, the rain drums like a patrol’s boots.
At dawn, the Housing Board knocks. They find his
scholarship file—marked Disciplinary Review.
Leila’s father is summoned. His medal from the
Malay Regiment is taken. Her mother’s prayer mat
is burned by order of the District Officer,
deemed “subversive cultural mixing.”
Wei Meng keeps his scholarship. But he never
steps into the library again.
In 1958, he graduates top of his class. The
British offer him a posting in London. He boards
the ship alone.
On the dock, a Malay woman sells kueh lapis. He
buys one. He doesn’t eat it. He lets it rot in
his pocket—until the salt air turns it to dust.
The HDB block still stands. On the fifthfloor
stairwell, children whisper: If you climb too
slow at night, you’ll feel a hand—cold, gentle,
never speaking.
No one knows it’s his.
No one knows it’s hers.
