Singapore, with its aseptic cleanliness and efficient governance, not to mention museums with breathtaking collections, grand temples, sights and sounds of localities such as Chinatown and Little India symbolising its cosmopolitanism, has been written about in great abundance.

I had also written about it for Dawn when I went there as a travel writer in 1992. But there is something new to discover about every place, as I found out recently.

A few months ago, I was on a visit to Singapore to enjoy the company of my chirpy, three-year-old grandchildren.

They live in Clementi, which is on the west coast of the island and is as clean and tidy as the rest of the city-state.

I am given a room with a view. I can see three cranes working incessantly on top of under-construction skyscrapers.

The tall buildings in Clementi are almost all residential. My host’s condominium is on the sixth floor of a chain of five 20-storey buildings called Blue Horizon Condominiums, which has 600 apartments.

The well designed and efficiently-built structures are very well maintained. There are swimming pools – one for adults and two for kids of different age groups – as well as a basketball court.

Amongst the facilities is a reading room, which remains open till 11pm, where residents read newspapers and work on their laptops.

What I find most useful is the shuttle service. Comfortable coaches take you to the nearest shopping centres, including one which houses a Mass Rapid Transport station.

The showrooms, shops and the restaurants are no different from the ones we see everywhere in the world. But what’s most fascinating are the public libraries.

I have seen public libraries in many parts of the world but the one in Clementi is the most colourful and spacious library I have ever seen. Even the lighting arrangement is bright and mood-uplifting.

I learn from my hostess that one doesn’t have to be a member to use the library. Everyone can read books, which are mostly in English, and the periodicals that are in the four national languages of Singapore: English, Chinese, Malay, and Tamil.

But one has to be a member to borrow the books, and the annual membership fee depends on the residential status of the borrowers. It is the lowest for Singaporean nationals, but still highly affordable for residents on work visas. A lady from the subcontinent says she pays only 12 Singaporean dollars per year.

In order to communicate the message that speaking on cellphone is not allowed in the library, the management has prominently placed three interesting illustrations.

One shows a man chattering on the phone. He is flanked by a man trying to read a book, and a woman with a baby in her lap struggling to concentrate on a magazine.

The second illustration depicts expressions of annoyance on the faces of the two neighbours of the man on the phone. The third shows the child’s pacifier inserted in the man’s mouth, much to the amusement of the child.

The section that interests me the most is the one stocked with colourful books for preschoolers, where I see a mom and a grandmother reading to children from pictorial books. The children are highly engrossed in the exercise and don’t take notice of someone clicking his camera.

Not too far away is the section where kids, under the supervision of their mothers or grandmothers, learn to use computers. The programmes are visually appealing for the infants.

Apart from the usual sections containing books on fiction, politics, international relations, there are sections on cookery (where I noticed three men but no women), family and parenting.

What attracts my attention next are the programmes for the upcoming month pasted on colourful boards. Amongst them are storytelling sessions and Chinese calligraphy. Understanding dyslexia is another session on the list aimed towards parents with dyslexic children.

A team of young men and women from the library staff and the local branch of the British Council is engrossed in displaying the programmes on Shakespeare. They whisper to one another so as not to break the silence that pervades in the reading room.

Shakespeare in Singapore is the title of one large poster. I wonder if the Bard ever visited the city-state. He couldn’t have, because in his days Singapore was merely a non-descript fishing village.

The poster lists the Shakespearean plays performed in Singapore in the last year and mentions the names of the theatre groups, local and foreign, staging them. A Shakespeare enthusiast from the UK based in Singapore tells me that the quality of presentations could match the standard set in his home country. Seeing is believing is what they say, but I have no time to stay for long in Singapore.

On my way out I see a woman with a teenage daughter placing on the scanner, one by one, the books that they want to borrow.

“Do you bring the books here to this scanner when you want to return them?” I ask.

“You seem to have missed the two openings near the main door. We just drop our books there, even after the library is closed. The machines placed on the other end of the opening do the needful,” she tells me.

The library, like the mall where it is housed, opens daily at 9am and closes at 11pm.

A bearded, young man manning the counter tells me that there are as many as 26 regional libraries in Singapore, but the one in Clementi is among the larger ones. “The largest, of course, is the Singapore National Library, which you should visit at least once,” he says.

I didn’t see a single bookstore in any of the malls that I visited. But perhaps this is because bookstores aren’t necessary when you can borrow six books at a time and keep them for a month from a public library.

All photos by the author.

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