The Best I Could (14 page)

Lunch was at around 10.30 am. Every day of the week, we would get a block of
tauhu
(soya bean cake) with some gravy on it, together with some vegetables. The vegetables obviously weren’t washed very well or perhaps not washed at all, as you could often find sand and grit in them. Sometimes we felt like cats and dogs feeding on discarded bits of vegetables from a restaurant rubbish bin.

If you thought lunch was served early, dinner at 3.00 pm was even earlier. This meant that from 3.00 pm to 6.00 am the next day when breakfast was served, we were not given anything to eat. There was no night snack. So, you can well imagine our hunger pangs between dinner and breakfast. Just thinking about my mother’s cooking during that time made me dizzy. In prison, we didn’t have the luxury of raiding the fridge in the middle of the night. It was one of the things I missed the most.

For dinner on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, we would get a piece of fish with some gravy, vegetables and rice. On Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays, we were given meat. The Chinese inmates got pork, which was actually pork fat, as the prisoners who were detailed as cooks would save the lean meat for themselves. The Indians got three or four pieces of mutton, served with a potato if we were lucky, while the Malays were given either mutton or beef. This dietary difference based on race was similar to that in army mess halls. I found out later that the meals we received in prison only just met the United Nations calorie count requirements for meat, vegetables and carbohydrates. The authorities ensured that they kept to the basic requirements. I suppose it was one way of punishing the prisoners. We did not expect to be given T-bone steaks or lamb chops but the authorities did not have to be so miserly with their food. We weren’t convicted prisoners or Oliver Twists asking for more. Most of us were in remand, waiting expectantly for decisions about our fates. Anyway, when you’re in there, you get used to the regime because you had to have some sustenance.

Still, all 14 of my grillemates including Anthony noticed that I found it difficult to eat. One day, they decided that they would do something for me.

“We will cook for you,” one of them suggested.

“What?!” I exclaimed.

“Shhh. Cooking is illegal.”

I stared at my grillemates incredulously. They just grinned at me. I was curious to find out how they could possibly cook inside the grille but they advised me to be patient. When the dinner trays arrived that day, they kept some food aside. In the evening, after everyone had returned from their work duties, they started a small fire with parts of our sleeping mats. They used the pots for drinking to heat up the food they had kept aside and added extras like chillis or pickles that the cooks among our group had squirrelled away from the kitchen. We all squatted or sat around the pots, eating the hot food as quickly as we could. We had to eat quickly as prison officers were always lurking and could unexpectedly check on our grille. Prisoners from another grille kept a lookout for us so that we could clear the area before an officer appeared on his inspection round.

That first dinner my grillemates cooked for me was the best dinner I had had for a long, long time. The dinners I have had as a free man were not comparable simply because I had not been so hungry.

From then on, my grillemates would cook for me once or twice a week. An interesting combination of food would be boiling in a soup over two fires. On some occasions, plastic would be used to start the fire. If it gave a burning smell, my grillemates would use a hair cream like Tancho which we were allowed to have, to rub on the plastic—this gave off the smell of Tancho instead of burnt plastic. I learnt how to eat piping hot food, straight out of the fire. I still drink hot soup very quickly, much to the dismay of my wife. She always asks me how I do that. I will just look at her with a smile, and she knows I’m thinking of my prison days.

Cooking in prison was a source of great excitement for me. My friends from the other grilles would sometimes engage the help of a ‘friendly’ warden, who was well aware that cooking in the grille was illegal, to pass a pot of hot soup to me to taste when they cook. After every cooking session, we would all light up a cigarette for a smoke that we did not have to share with anyone. It was a treat because most of the time when someone lights up, the cigarette had to be shared among a few grillemates. So, Anthony, someone else and I would normally share one cigarette. It was a sort of tradition in prison that you do not smoke a cigarette all by yourself. The only time we did was after a dinner we had cooked in the grille. I looked forward to those clandestine cooking sessions. I suspected that the wardens knew what was going on but chose to do nothing. Some of them had a lot of compassion while the others were like animals.

I still remember a warden who came to the grille as we were all seated and chatting. He remarked: “You know what you all remind me of? The animals in the zoo, caged behind iron bars.” He laughed and went away.

I thought his remarks unnecessary and very cruel. The next day I met the superintendent and told him what that officer had said. I insisted that if the officer did not apologise, I would definitely ask my family to instruct a lawyer to write a letter to the Director of Prisons about it. Prison authorities were supposed to rehabilitate prisoners, not humiliate them. The superintendent agreed with me. That night he sent the officer to the grille. The officer looked at us through the bars of the grille and said: “I’m sorry for what I said last night. I’m sorry. I did not mean it and I will not do it again.”

It was a positive response and word quickly spread within the prison that even officers had to behave. Otherwise they would be answerable to the prisoners. Slowly, I was building up a reputation among the prisoners. I was becoming their voice and leader.

During my time in prison, inmates would ask me to help write letters to their ministers, their girlfriends and families. I think many couldn’t read or write. I was also asked to mediate in problems between gangs. Because of my perceived seniority in the hierarchy of gangs, the decisions I made were final and accepted without question. There was no appeal. In a way, I was enjoying the power that was bestowed upon me by the prison, but I don’t think I abused my power or ever did anyone in by making a wrong decision.

It may come as a surprise to people who have never spent time in prison that prisoners share a certain code of ethics. These ethics have evolved over the years and help inmates survive. When we went to the yard in the mornings, we would put our wet clothes out to dry and hope that they would dry by the time we had to return to our grille. The sunniest spot would be reserved for the strongest gang. The rest of the spots for drying were reserved according to the strength and power of a gang. Thus the weakest gangs had to place their clothes to dry in spots that hardly received any sunlight.

I recall an incident that involved inmates who didn’t belong to a gang but decided to form one of their own. The name of the gang was something like ‘One Heart’. In true gang tradition, they even picked their leader and had council members. They asked the other gangs to recognise them but were rejected; they were told that the formation of their gang was simply for convenience and that they had not gone through the traditional rituals. The members of the One Heart gang decided to meet with me to discuss their rejection.

“This is difficult. They’re not recognising us as a gang,” the leader told me.

“What is your purpose? Do you want a better place to dry your clothes?” I asked.

Another gang member replied: “No, we just want an identity. We don’t mind where we dry our clothes. We’re not going to fight with them on where we can or can’t dry our clothes. We just think it’s time that we organise ourselves into a gang so that we will have some power for future purposes.”

Basically, they just wanted to be recognised and if they weren’t given that recognition, they were going to cause some problems. Some of the members were quite hot-headed and they were all generally unhappy. They felt that they were being unfairly treated by the other gangs. Because I sensed that the situation would only get worse if it was not resolved, I called for a meeting of all the heads of the other gangs.

Holding court, I told them: “Do you want trouble? These people are not fighting for any space to dry their clothes. They just want to be recognised and have the feeling that they, too, belong to some gang. They don’t want to join any of your gangs. What is your problem?” The gang leaders said that these people simply formed the gang as a matter of convenience.

I reasoned with them. “This is a prison. They can’t follow any rituals. They are unable to do anything. They can only do what they are doing right now. I suggest that to avoid a problem, you recognise them and give them whatever privileges they are supposed to get as a gang. They are not going to fight with you and I seriously suggest that you recognise them.”

Very reluctantly, the gang leaders heeded my advice and accepted the new gang. The new gang was given a new spot to dry their clothes, a spot that was slightly better than when they were not united. As the drama unfolded over the next few days, I was constantly thinking: “This reminds me of the United Nations when a country wants to be recognised and the others choose not to do so because it has not met the required criteria.” To a degree, these gangs were like countries in a small United Nations. The only difference was that my advice as the de facto ‘Secretary-General’ was always heeded. Mr Kurt Waldheim, who was Secretary-General of the United Nations during the time I was in prison, probably did not have as smooth a ride in his job.

In a similar vein, when other problems between gangs arose, I was asked to mediate and settle them. One of the biggest problems I encountered was a situation that involved the head of Gang 18 and his deputy. One day, while the two were showering themselves, two other men stabbed them with blades fashioned from handles that had been broken off from pots and sharpened. They didn’t see the men coming as they had soap on their faces. Blood flowed freely on the floor, mixed with the bath water, as they lay crouched on the floor, groaning and pressing their hands against their wounds to stop the bleeding. Their gang members frantically called for help, creating a commotion that had other inmates craning over their cubicles to see what was happening.

Prison officers were on the scene immediately. The men were taken to the prison hospital and treated for their injuries which, while serious, were not life-threatening. The assailants were moved to a block for prisoners serving their sentences because the authorities anticipated a problem developing from the stabbing incident.

When the superintendent wanted to question the victims, he asked a prisoner named Danny, who was the chief clerk, to be the interpreter. But the victims objected to Danny as they claimed he had arranged for the assailants to be in the yard at the time they were having their showers. One of them said: “If you look at the roster, they were not supposed to be in the yard then. Danny had arranged for them to be there because he belonged to their gang.” On investigation, the superintendent found their claims to be true. Danny was immediately sent away to a punishment cell. Almost all the inmates celebrated the move as Danny was not popular. They felt that he was growing too big for his boots since his appointment as chief clerk. Even though he was a prisoner like all of us, he behaved as though he was an officer in charge. I too felt that Danny was getting increasingly annoyed with me for encroaching into his areas of activity within the prison walls with my mediation efforts. I sensed he didn’t appreciate them at all.

As the incident was a gang matter, the prison officers were wary of allowing the prisoners out into the yard. They were afraid of repercussions. In their experience, there were always repercussions. There would be more stabbings and it would be a never-ending cycle. It was likely that the prison officers were also concerned about their own safety when they had to break up fights. So, after the incident, prison officers escorted the prisoners in twos, threes or fours to the yard to have their shower and escorted them back to their grilles before the next group of inmates was allowed to shower. It was a tedious process but it had to be done to ensure there would be no violence. Because of this adjustment to our routine, prisoners were spending more than 23 hours in their grilles.

This continued for a few days. However, I was allowed to go to the yard and the prison officers would release me when it was yard time. I would sit there all alone, smoking a cigarette and reading the newspapers. One day, the superintendent came up to me as I was reading a recent copy of the
New Nation
and asked if he could have a word with me. I agreed and followed him to his office. There were two prison officers there, a Mr Wong and Darshan Singh. Darshan is now better known as the ‘hangman of Singapore’. His identity was publicly revealed by an Australian newspaper in 2005, before drug trafficker Vietnamese Australian Van Tuong Nguyen was executed. As a result of the report, Darshan said he wasn’t Nguyen’s executioner but that someone from Malaysia was. The report could have come about because of Darshan telling the Australian newspaper that “with me (the prisoners) don’t struggle. If (the executioner is) a raw guy, they will struggle like chickens, like fish out of water”. As was to be expected from a country that doesn’t have capital punishment, this comment wasn’t well-received in Australia and then Foreign Minister Alexander Downer retorted: “I don’t think an executioner is qualified to give useful advice. I think he seems to have found great appeal in making a spectacle of himself in the media. And I tell you that’s completely inappropriate and I don’t want to hear from him again.”

I knew Darshan from before my time in prison. He had married a Muslim woman and converted to Islam. I recall him telling me that when we were alone I should address him only as Darshan. When I saw him in the superintendent’s office, I knew there were problems.

The superintendent asked me, “How are things now that the inmates are not going to the yard?”