01/27/2026
A True to Life Story of a Father's Unwavering Love
Every two weeks, when the town is still wrapped in that peculiar silence which comes just before dawn, Cheong Kah Pin wakes without the need of an alarm. At seventy, sleep no longer holds him tightly. It loosens its grip after midnight, as if it too has grown old.
He rises quietly from his narrow bed in the rented house in Johor Bahru. The room is modest: a wooden table, a thermos, a calendar with the wrong month still hanging. He washes his face in cold water and listens to the small sounds of the house settling. At two in the morning, he wheels his motorcycle into the road and starts it carefully, as though afraid to disturb the darkness.
The ride to Singapore takes only thirty minutes. Yet he leaves much earlier.
âI am old,â he says, not apologetically but as one states the weather. âWhen I ride, I am afraid I will knock into others, or they into me. So I come early. I ride slowly.â
The road at that hour is nearly empty. Streetlights flicker over him in pale succession. The wind presses against his thin jacket; his hands, once steady from years of lifting crates of vegetables, tremble slightly on the handlebars. He does not hurry. There is nowhere to hurry to.
By three oâclock, he reaches the petrol station beside Changi Prison. The attendants know him now. They nod as one nods to a familiar piece of furniture. Sometimes one of them brings him tea in a paper cup. He thanks them with a small bow of the head, holding the cup carefully, as if warmth were a fragile thing.
For five hours he waits.
He sits on a plastic chair near the edge of the forecourt. The sky changes slowlyâfrom black to bruised purple, then to a pale grey that reveals the hard outlines of the prison walls. He watches lorries pass. He watches birds descend on the wires. He watches nothing in particular.
Waiting has become his occupation.
At eight oâclock, the gates open.
He goes inside for fifteen minutes.
His son, Chun Yin, is forty-three now. Nearly half his life has been measured in counts and locks and the echo of footsteps along corridors.
In 2008, when he was twenty-four, he stood at Changi Airport with a small bag and an uncomplicated heart. A friendâs employer had asked him to carry what he was told were gold bars. There would be RM8,000 for the trouble. It seemed an easy kindness to accept.
âHe is like that,â Cheong says. âIf you are good to him, he will believe you more.â
The package did not contain gold bars. It contained he**in.
There are moments in life so brief that one does not even feel them passing, yet afterward everything is different. A zipper closed. A customs officerâs glance. A hand on the shoulder. These were small gestures. They divided a life in two.
The sentence was death.
Cheong remembers the day as one remembers a fever dreamâvoices speaking, papers rustling, his own breath sounding too loud in his ears. He sold three houses. Each signature on the contracts felt like scraping away a layer of bone. He paid lawyers. He waited in corridors. He prayed, though he had never been certain how.
The sentence was later reduced to life imprisonment and fifteen strokes of the cane. It was called mercy.
Mercy, he learned, can still leave a man with nothing.
Now he rents a small house for RM700 a month. He runs a vegetable stall at Pasar Awam Taman Johor Jaya. In the mornings, he arranges bok choy and long beans with deliberate care, weighing them on old scales. Customers speak of prices, of rain, of their childrenâs schooling. He listens politely. He does not mention prisons.
Twice a month, he closes the stall early and prepares for his journey in the dark.
Inside the prison, time does not move like it does outside. Trees planted as saplings have grown tall beyond the walls. Buildings have been torn down and replaced with glass towers. Petrol station attendants have aged, married, changed jobs. But within those walls, his son remains at twenty-four and forty-three simultaneouslyâa young man who made a foolish decision and an older man paying for it.
Fifteen minutes.
They sit across from each other. Sometimes they speak of small things: the weather, the price of vegetables, an ache in the shoulder. Sometimes they are silent. Cheong studies his sonâs face, searching for what has changed and what has not. He notices a new line near the mouth. A greying strand at the temple. He tries to memorize these details, as if committing them to paper.
He does not ask, âWhy?â That question has worn itself out.
When the guard signals that time is finished, they stand. They do not embrace for long. Cheong nods, as though concluding an ordinary visit. Then he walks back through the gates and into the open air, where the sun is already high.
He rides home alone.
People have offered to drive him. Some have pressed money into his hand. He withdraws gently.
âI donât want to trouble you,â he says. âSeeing you care for me has made me very happy.â
If they insist on helping, he tells them to visit his vegetable stall. Buy some spinach. That is enough.
Even in his diminished circumstances, he dislikes the feeling of being pitied. Pride, like love, can survive great hardship.
According to the law, a prisoner serving life may be reviewed after twenty years. If fortuneâif such a word still appliesâpermits, Chun Yin might return home in 2028. Cheong will be seventy-two. His son, forty-five.
Twenty years is a long time. It is also, when measured against a fatherâs love, surprisingly small.
Each visit costs him hours of waiting, the chill of pre-dawn air, the quiet humiliation of passing through security gates. It has cost him houses, savings, comfort. Yet he has never once said, âIt is too much.â
Perhaps this is because he does not consider it sacrifice. To him, it is simply what must be done.
Love does not argue with arithmetic. It does not count the houses sold or the miles ridden. It wakes at two in the morning, starts an aging motorcycle, and rides slowly through the darkâafraid of falling, but more afraid of not arriving.
Outside the prison, the world continues its restless transformations. Inside, a man waits. And every two weeks, before dawn, another man rides toward him, carrying nothing but fifteen minutes and a patience that seems, like the road itself, without end.
