A celebrated writer’s life in words, in service of the people and reflecting their hopes and dreams.
Born in 1938, Mr Mayandiambalam Balakrishnan remembers the years after the Second World War with clarity. “Singapore was poor then; I’d never seen such poverty,” he recalls. “There was a lot of crime and we all had to find different ways of coping.”
Mr Bala first worked for the British military forces stationed in Singapore as a storeman. After Singapore gained its Independence in 1965, he worked as a typist in the translation department of the Ministry of Culture. The work brought him back to his first love – words.
In his career as a typist, Mr Bala typed many speeches, writings and notices. He recalls the great changes since Independence and his work at City Hall typing the speeches of Singapore’s pioneering leaders. “I’m privileged to have witnessed the country’s most exciting historical milestones,” he says, “from the time Mr Lee Kuan Yew declared ‘Merdeka!’ for self-rule, to our separation from Malaysia, and now, our golden jubilee.”
What he remembers most vividly is the sense of urgency in Mr Lee’s speeches during the late 1960s – the years after Separation. “He was very strict,” says Mr Bala. “The speeches we typed were about how our country had little resources of our own. The only thing we had – for certain – was our freedom. But we had to buy all the basic necessities of life: rice, sugar and milk. Those were tough times. There was only one way out for us: we had to work very hard to survive as a people.”
Mr Bala learnt about industry from the Prime Minister himself. “Mr Lee used to give the National Day speech, which would be translated into Chinese, Malay and Tamil,” says Mr Bala. “We’d craft the translation, type them into stencils and send the copy to Mr Lee.
“Along the way, he’d make changes directly to the Chinese and Malay copies. But since he didn’t know Tamil, we thought there weren’t going to be changes on our side.