Individual Reflections -Quintal

Little India is a second home to many of us Indians residing here in Singapore. It is after all the closest thing to our motherland, India. Personally, Little India is one of the very few places in Singapore that I thought I knew very well. I have been going to Little India since I was very young, whether on the pretext of buying our marketing, to eating good Indian food to buying intricate jewellery and saris. However, much to my surprise, there were more to Little India than I originally thought of. Before the heritage trail, I was confident that I would complete this trail in one hour. Little did I know that what I thought little India was to me, was actually a whole lot bigger and rich in culture, traditions and history.

In the trail, I discovered Little India was packed with historical monuments and meanings. For example, I had visited the Shree Lakshmi Narayanan Temple many times for prayer ceremonies, but I never knew the history behind this temple, the meaning of the dome shaped structure and its origins. Through this heritage trail, I learnt that there was a meaning to why certain temples were built differently. For example, the southern Indian temples such as the Sri Veeramakaliamman Temple is a tall and high structure that has many intricate designs and status of the deities. The explanation was so that Indians from far away could see their deities and pray to them. In the other hand, the northern Indian temple, Shree Lakshmi Narayanan Temple has a very simple structure of a beehive dome on the top called, Shikhara.

It was truly an enlightening experience for me. Also, not only does Little India have many Indian temples around, there were temples of other faith and religion in Little India, showing the harmonious living conditions of the past 1950s.For example, there is a church, a Muslim temple, a Buddhist temple and a Chinese temple all located close to each other. This shows that the Indian people residing in Little India were very open and lived harmoniously with people of other religions and believes. This I believes has not changed from the past as Singaporeans today have grown together to be more open and tolerant other each other’s faith and believes.

Furthermore, in this trail, my group and I had visited various roads that had information of the historical background of the site in the past. It was surprising to learn that certain roads had a history so rich in detail in the past. Like for example, Race Course Road, was originally a place where horse racing took place mainly for the Europeans whereby the Indians were horse trainers. This horse racing business attracted many Europeans who settled down in Singapore, such as Major Samuel Dunlop, and therefore the road where he had settled down was named after him, Dunlop Road.

Lastly, one of the most prominent sites I visited was the Chinese villa or the residence of Tan Teng Niah. This house was the last surviving Chinese villas in Little India. I never knew that there were any Chinese villas that existed in the past and it was nice to know that the last surviving villa still stands today. It was a great pleasure to come to know such history behind a small part of Little India.

Overall, I was very satisfied with the experience of the trials, I was very amazed with the abundant knowledge I had learnt and was thrilled to know that Little India was more than just shopping paradise for us Indians, but instead it is a small part of Singapore with great historical background and monuments still around.