Every night at 11.30pm, Mei Lin clears the last
of the rice from her son’s plate, wipes his
school uniform with a damp cloth, and locks the
door to their 1968built HDB flat. She works
double shifts at the airport laundry, her hands
cracked from bleach, her divorce papers still
tucked under the fridge magnet shaped like a
durian. Her son, 12, sleeps with one earbud in,
listening to NS drill tracks—she knows he dreams
of joining the army to escape this flat, this
town, this life where a mother’s love is
measured in how many kaya toast she can afford.
The blind date was her sister’s idea. “He’s a
quiet one,” she said. “Works at the old Pasar
Malam stall. Good family. No drama.” Mei Lin
wore her only decent blouse, the one with the
faded orchid, and took the 10.15 bus to the
corner of Jalan Besar and Kallang Road, where
the hawker centre still glowed under yellow
bulbs, untouched by the new condos. She sat at
Table 7, ordered nasi lemak, waited. The
stallman didn’t speak. Just placed the plate
down, steam rising, coconut milk still warm, a
single fried anchovy perfectly placed on top—
exactly how her mother used to make it, before
the war took her.
He never sat. Never looked up. Just wiped the
counter with a rag that smelled of camphor and
old salt. The other customers didn’t blink. No
one ever did. In 1943, the Japanese took over
the kampong behind this site, turned it into a
supply depot. One boy, 14, hid in the kitchen
shed, survived the bombing, starved for three
days, then ate his own mother’s last nasi lemak
before the mortar hit. His spirit never left.
The rules: feed a hungry soul, and the ghost
stays anchored. Feed ten, and he moves on. No
one told Mei Lin. No one ever does.
She came back. Night after night. Each time, he
served her the same dish. She didn’t ask why the
rice was always too hot, why the sambal tasted
like rain on dried leaves. She brought her son.
He ate. The ghost didn’t flinch. The boy
whispered once, “Mummy, the man smells like wet
earth.” Mei Lin held his hand tighter. She
started bringing extra portions—for the old man
sleeping under the stairwell, for the woman who
sold lottery tickets with no legs, for the three
kids who stole chicken rice and ran.
On the 10th night, the ghost stood still. The
steam stopped rising. The oil in the pan
hardened into glass. He turned. His face was
halfburnt, halfsmiling. He bowed. Not to Mei Lin.
To the boy. Then he stepped backward into the
shadows of the old hawker canopy, where the
tiles cracked from 1942 shrapnel—and vanished.
The next morning, Mei Lin found a folded piece
of newspaper under her son’s pillow. A 1947
obituary: “Ah Beng, son of Pak Mat and Siti,
lost in the Occupation. Buried in Kallang
Cemetery, Plot 13. He fed the hungry before he
died.” Beneath it, a single fried anchovy,
preserved in resin. Her son woke up and said,
“Mummy, can we go to the cemetery? I think he
wants to be remembered.”
They went. Mei Lin bought three packets of nasi
lemak. Placed them on the unmarked grave. The
wind blew. The anchovy on her son’s plate
trembled—just once—and cracked into dust. The
ghost didn’t come back. But the next day, the
hawker stall’s owner, a new man, handed her the
same dish. “Your usual?” he asked. She nodded.
And for the first time in years, she cried—not
from tiredness, but because someone, somewhere,
remembered that feeding a child isn’t just food.
It’s family duty. And sometimes, it’s the only
thing that keeps ghosts from vanishing.
