SINGAPORE – Mr Rustam Shariq Mujtaba’s patchwork heritage is a reflection of Singapore – his paternal grandparents came from Nalanda, north India and China’s Fujian province, while his maternal grandmother hailed from Semabok in Melaka.

Mr Rustam knew his maternal grandfather was born in Singapore, but for a long time he did not know where exactly on the island he grew up.

“I couldn’t point to a village in Singapore and say, ‘this is where (he) came from’,” he said.

This matter drove the 28-year-old data analyst to start a heritage project to trace his family’s roots and tell stories of that kampung.

Mr Rustam would find out from a distant relative that his maternal grandfather came from Kampong Pos, a village that even his mother had not heard of.

Located in Seletar, its residents were displaced by a British Royal Air Force camp in the 1900s, said Mr Rustam.

Some would go on to settle in Kampong Tongkang Pechah, located around today’s Fernvale neighbourhood in Sengkang. The village existed from around the 1930s to the 1970s, and was taken over for pig farming after that, according to Mr Rustam’s research.

The village – believed to be named after a broken vessel in Sungei Punggol, which ran near the village – inspired the name for his heritage project, Project Broken Barges.

Its goal is to document and make known the history of Kampong Tongkang Pechah and the larger Seletar area. Mr Rustam started interviewing former residents in late 2023, and has been publishing their stories online.

So far, he and other project volunteers have put up 10 articles on online publishing platform Medium, with areas such as Yio Chu Kang, Seletar Hills and Jalan Kayu among those featured.

Mr Rustam, who lived in a HDB flat in Pasir Ris in his younger years, said he grew up thinking HDB living was the norm.

“But no, (my parents and grandparents) said ‘this is not normal at all, we have changed so much in the past decades and we used to live in a village’ – that to me was unfathomable... and I think it is important to record and impart that change in Singapore is not only constant, it is rampant,” he added.

His mother would tell him stories of leisurely rowing a sampan (small boat) down Sungei Punggol to catch fishes and clams, and how fruit and vegetables that people buy in supermarkets today – kang kong, bok choy and papayas – were free, grown on kampung land.

These sto...