ELANGOVAN
MRT - Outram
“Please stand behind the yellow line!”
a single rifle shot by Sepoy Ismail Khan
5th Light Infantry (Rajput and Pathan)
Monday 15 February 1915, Chinese New Year, 3 pm
Alexandra Barracks
Mutiny
a waitingforsomeone pops into banned bubblegum air
from a school dropout’s mouth
“Singapore good!” from troopship “Hardinge”
for Subedar Dunde Khan, Jemedar Abdul Ali Khan,
Jemedar Chisti Khan and Havildar Imtiaz Ali
but revolutionary Har Dayal’s
Ghadar advertisement from Berlin
WANTED: FEARLESS, COURAGEOUS SOLDIERS
FOR SPREADING MUTINY AMONG INDIAN FORCES
DATE: FRIDAY 19 FEBRUARY 1915
PLACE: ALL OVER THE WORLD
SALARY: DEATH
REWARD: MATRYDOM AND FREEDOM
“Shoot Inglees!”
40 British officers and civilians killed
“Singapore bad!” from Central Gaol of Pearl’s Hill
officer scrambles from control glassdome
to apprehend a student farecard
in the hands of a goodlooking adult
outside the wall of Central Gaol in 1964
a boy and his mother
carrying home free milkpowder
from the Institute of Health
watched maggots dropping from the
yellow pus dripping headwound of a black dog
raising its hindleg to water
Outram Park construction site timber
officer stops a man
carrying gaping durians
showing yellow flesh
to the train
once a wandering boyscout spotted nooses writhing from trees
scanning for last looks of lost faces in the Pearl’s Hill wind
now spermdry tissues of the night
gather morning dew
22 mutineers
feet bound to stakes in the exercise yard
shot by men drawn from 110 volunteers
15,000 spectators outside the wall
white prison warders
whipped their revolvers
to freeze the reverberations of
Allahu Akbar with coup de grace
(someone told me that they died
only after their talismans were removed)
people slither to swoop on seats
when death in the tunnel
is screwed by the liquid crystal display
of the arrival of the last westbound train
“God knows!
a shot was fired and everybody seemed to go mad!”
answered Lance Naik Fazal Azim
in the whitewashing inquiry
“Were the bodies carried by Chinese convicts to the pig-sty as swill?”
“God knows!
Mutineers have no religion!
God save the King!” saluted the freed Sepoys
Outram Park Station!
Can’t you queue up!
Hey! Got common-sense or not?
You want to walk through me is it?
Please give way to alighting passengers!
Please mind the platform gap!
Mind the gap! Mind the gap! Mind the gap!
2 Officers, 6 Havildars and 39 Sepoys
would have soldiered on for Inglees
after 10 months’ garrison duty in Singapore
if only Brigadier General Dudley Howard Ridout or
Lieutenant Colonel Edward Victor Martin
had announced at 8 am that
Sepoys were going to Hong Kong for duty
not to Europe to kill Muslims of Turkey
the next day
“Next station Tiong Bahru!”