Rani, 17, sleeps under the tin roof of her
grandfather’s kampong house in Kallang, where
the scent of burnt joss paper still clings to
the walls. Her mother coughs through the night —
tuberculosis from the factory smoke — and the
HDB notice tacked to the gate says eviction in
42 days. No compensation. No appeal. The land,
once part of a Malay healer’s ancestral grove,
is now “undeveloped state property.”
On the eve of Deepavali, Rani finds a soggy
lottery ticket tucked inside her grandfather’s
prayer book — a 1953 Singapore Sweep entry,
stamped with a dragon and a Malay kris. She
doesn’t believe. But when the draw is read on
Radio Singapore, her number wins: $12,000. The
prize isn’t cash. It’s a deed — to the very plot
the government wants to flatten.
The world shifts that night. The air thickens.
The old banyan tree behind the house groans, and
from its roots rises a woman in faded batik,
eyes hollow as a kopi tiam’s empty cup. She is
the Kuntilanak of the old waterway, bound to the
land by a colonial decree that made spirits pay
taxes in blood. She demands Rani honour the pact:
settle the debt between her clan and the Chinese
ghost of the tea merchant who drowned in the
canal — or the land reclaims Rani’s family
instead.
The rules bite hard: no spirit can cross a
boundary drawn in salt without consent. No human
can own spirit land unless they mediate a truce.
Rani, the grassroots leader her neighbours never
chose but now follow, gathers the old folks —
Chinese, Malay, Indian — to sit under the banyan.
They bring offerings: banana leaves, incense, a
jar of sweet red beans. No one speaks. Only the
wind carries their grief.
At dawn, Rani walks barefoot to the canal’s edge.
She pours the lottery winnings — converted to
silver coins — into the water. The kuntilanak
kneels. The tea merchant’s ghost steps from the
mist, his silk jacket frayed, his hand offering
a single lotus flower. They bow. The land sighs.
The HDB surveyor’s marker, planted the day
before, cracks open like a boiled egg.
The next morning, the eviction notice is gone.
In its place, a letter from the Urban
Redevelopment Authority: “Due to heritage
conservation review, your property status is
pending.” The neighbours whisper. Some say it’s
luck. Others say it’s the old ways. Rani doesn’t
tell them the truth — that the spirit world now
pays rent in peace.
The banyan tree blooms in December. The coughing
slows. The HDB flats rise nearby, but the grove
remains — small, sacred, humming. Kids from the
new estates come to leave toys at its roots.
Rani opens a stall selling kueh lapis and chai,
and the ghosts, quiet now, watch over the queue.
Not because they have to. But because they chose
to stay.
