After the Grid died in ’59, Tiong Bahru’s flats
went dark. No more water pumps. No more
refrigerators. The British left, the Japanese
took what was left, and now the state rationed
power like rice—only one hour a night, for
cooking permits.
Lim Eng Kiat, once a junior clerk at the Housing
Board, lost his job when the files burned. He
didn’t cry. He packed his father’s tin of kueh
lapis spices into a satchel, tied it with twine,
and started walking. His ambition wasn’t wealth—
it was to bake the recipe again. Not for profit.
For proof that something from before still
mattered.
He found the old bakery on Seng Poh Road, roof
caved in, oven rusted into a skeleton. Inside,
he found his father’s journal. The last entry:
“They say fire is theft. But hunger is worse.”
On the third night, he lit a charcoal brazier
under the stairs. Used his last ration token to
steal an hour. The scent rose—cinnamon, coconut,
palm sugar—before the patrol arrived.
The rule bit hard: no cooking without permit. No
exceptions. Even for memory.
They took him to the depot. Not for punishment.
For erasure. His spices were dumped into the
drain. The journal, burned. His hands, branded
with a number: 417.
He walked home barefoot. The next morning, he
stood outside Block 78, where his mother still
lived. She didn’t ask where he’d been. She
handed him a plastic bag. Inside: three kueh
lapis, warm, perfect, made with her own hands—
using stolen sugar, stolen eggs, stolen time.
He ate one. Didn’t speak.
The city still had no power. But for the first
time since the blackout, someone in Tiong Bahru
had baked something that tasted like home.
He didn’t try again.
He just kept walking.
