'Don't listen to rumours. Don't talk to strangers'. I remember these routine whispers in 1969 in the schoolyards, kopi-tiams and living rooms. The wrong word uttered would land you in jail, we were told. That fear was very real to a Form Two kid haunted by stories of people hacked off their limbs on the streets, outside cinemas, churches, temples. Each embellished story sounded more bloodier than the one before.

For a week after May 13, I saw my father and other folks - Chinese, Indians and a few Eurasians - shuffled off to the cemetery for their nightwatch outside our village in Penang with rusty parangs, bamboo spears and improvised tools of defence - just in case the nearby kampung attacked us in the dark. That was a very long week to a 14-year-old who slept with his school shoes on, just in case.