Underfoot – Rita Pillai

Underfoot
By Rita Pillai

The house was perfect.

After weeks of searching, my husband and I had finally found it—a charming two-storey home with a neat little garden, a freshly painted fence, and a price that felt almost too good to be true. Even my mother-in-law, the hardest to please, seemed impressed—though she was more preoccupied with checking the sun’s position and the “auspicious numbers” on the front door.

We stepped out, breathing in the warm afternoon air. And our then four-year-old daughter started crying. Not just a fussy whimper, but a full-blown wail, her little hands clenched into fists as she refused to take another step.

Nothing we did could calm her.

Then, between gulping sobs, she pointed upwards.

"I don’t like the house with the triangle roof!" she cried.

My husband and I exchanged glances. The house did have a sharply pointed roof, but—what was there to dislike?

"She’s just tired," I said, forcing a smile at the confused agent waiting by the door. But our daughter wouldn’t stop. She squirmed, kicked, and screamed until we had no choice but to retreat, mumbling apologies as we hurried back to the car.

That night, as we sat at the dining table, planning to return the next day and seal the deal, I did one last search. Just for peace of mind.

I typed in the address and waited.

And then I saw it.

The house was one of many built over what was once Bidadari—a cemetery, long since exhumed, its graves replaced with roads, houses and parks.

I looked up from my screen. My daughter was sound asleep on the sofa, her chest rising and falling in steady breaths.

Her words echoed in my head.

"I don’t like the house with the triangle roof."
-----
Bidadari, Revisited 

The train hums steadily,
gliding past stations that didn’t exist before.
I sit by the window,
watching the blur of concrete and glass.

From Dhoby Ghaut to Woodleigh,
heads bent over screens,
eyes glazed with indifference.
No one looks up.
No one remembers.

At Potong Pasir, the crowd shifts,
a silent choreography of life in transit.
Someone steps in, someone steps out—
sandals, slippers, sneakers,
gliding with ease.

Three beeps. An announcement. The doors shut.
The young, the old, the impatient,
crammed into a space they are forced to share.

Next stop: Woodleigh.

Here, the past has settled underfoot,
pressed into soil and stone.
Where tombstones once stood,
the living now gather—
eating, shopping, laughing.

The past is quiet now,
woven into the roots of trees,
glimpsed in road signs and park names
lingering beneath the weight of footsteps.

Bidadari then, Woodleigh now.
A part of me wonders—
did we overthink it, all those years ago?
Had we let an old superstition,
a child’s fear,
dictate the course of our lives?

The train slows. The doors slide open.
People step in, step out,
Faces masked, personas maintained. 

No one looks up.
No one remembers.

But the past is still here,
quiet, unseen, underfoot.