Old Haunts

By P.Ramakrishnan

I spent my formative, volatile teen years in the West Wing… of Green Lane Hall on Blue Pool Road. The paint-chipped block is anything but presidential, but it proudly sustains the Hong Kong tradition of effusive monikers, particularly in Happy Valley, where addresses such as Celestial Gardens and Beverly Hills thrive.

For nearly a decade, the 12th floor of the government housing estate for expatriate workers was a haven for my school friends and I, as we slipped out of physical education classes, soon after roll call. We watched Oprah, in the good old days of trashy mid-afternoon programming. Where the school curriculum failed, Oprah taught us about life, with fare such as, “My reunion with my one-night stand” (this was the show’s early days, before it turned holier-than-thou).

The block is full of moist-eyed memories for me, even though I left more than a decade ago. Every time I drive past, I count three floors from the top. If a shadow passes the curtains, I squeal, “There’s someone in my room!”

My room now is the size of two and a half coffins, so memories of the 2,600 sq ft abode still dance in my mind.

On a whim recently, I walked down memory lane to a place I once called home.

Where once a grumpy, tanned septuagenarian watchman chain-smoked on a wooden stool, a metallic rod bolts the entrance. Instead of the slow, cranky relic of a lift that groaned when the more rotund residents entered it, a silver contraption announces the floors in Cantonese, English and Putonghua.

When I got to the door of my old home, painted in another coat of beige, I was tempted to ring the bell and sneak a peek inside. Would the lemon-tea stain in the living room (remnant of a food fight with my friend Farheen) still be there? Was the floor the same café-au-lait woodwork or had someone carpeted over it? Did the apartment have more than one phone-line (teen years of begging for another came to naught)? Was the “snot-green” kitchen untouched, or had someone painted it a more palatable shade?

Walking back and away, reflecting on the changes I had already seen, I knew there were some questions best left unanswered.


Published in South China Morning Post, City pages, relationship column.