How two sisters found love across the border

Friendship, love and marriage are not words typically associated with the Causeway, a vital piece of infrastructure that links Singapore and Malaysia’s southern Johor state, and which celebrates its centenary in 2024.

- Zunaira Saieed

More often than not, the word “Causeway” evokes visions of massive crowds, tedious bumper-to-bumper traffic, and long queues of people headed to and from Johor Bahru city and the Republic to work, shop and eat.

But without the Johor-Singapore Causeway, generations of families might never have come into existence. The solid 1.056km stretch of granite and steel that connects Malaysia and Singapore has done more than bridge two nations – it has intertwined the destinies of numerous people.

For two sisters in Singapore in the 1970s and 1980s, Ms Viro and Ms Mito, the Causeway land link led to friendship, love and marriage.

Little did the two know then that the Causeway would be a huge part of their lives for the next five decades.

It all began when their late father, Mr Chanchal Singh, who cycled daily to work from their family home in Woodlands, Singapore, to Johor Bahru, struck up a close friendship with Mr Sucha Singh from Johor in the 1970s.

Friendship soon blossomed into kinship, as the families arranged a match between Mr Chanchal’s daughter, Ms Viro, and Mr Sucha’s son, Mr Kalbir. The wedding festivities in 1976 involved much merriment and high spirits on both sides of the border.

“If not for the Causeway, my husband and I would not be happily married today,” a smiling Mrs Singh, 71, told The Straits Times. The couple, who celebrate their 48th wedding anniversary in 2024, have three daughters, and four grandchildren aged 11 to 13.