AUGUST this year is one big, long party for HDB residents in Rivervale Crescent, a small, narrow street in Sengkang.

On Friday, at the Arulmigu Velmurugan Gnanamuneeswarar Temple, a Hindu priest carrying a bowl of fire parted the hundreds who had come to be blessed.

 The Arulmigu Velmurugan Gnanamuneeswarar Temple in Sengkang gets some finishing touches by workers before it's official consecration ceremony. ST PHOTO: Bryan Van Der Beek

As he walked, the crowd circled him, swaying to the beat of drums in the background.

One after another, they stretched out their fingers to touch the flame. Those who managed to reach him eagerly raised their warmed hands to their foreheads.

Next door, about 20 men and women, all clad in uniform white, stood outside a different temple to promote their religion by inviting passers-by in for a tour.

"We rarely do this," said a Chinese woman in her sixties. She pointed to a sign at the entrance to emphasise her point: "No trespassers allowed".

Inside the temple’s exclusive, all-white exterior, Mr Tan, a long-time member, explained to a roomful of new patrons the Heavenly Tao, a little-known religion here that combines the beliefs of Buddhism, Taoism, Confucianism, Islam and Christianity.

"We are all born in sin," he began, adding hopefully: "But if we introduce you to the Buddha, your names will vanish from the books of Hell. To receive the Tao is the only way to Heaven."

Quickly, they wrote down for Mr Tan their names and phone numbers to get "on the list", as one obliging new recruit put it.

His expectant demeanor contrasted the wooden faces on display in yet another temple in the same street, which many residents in the neighbourhood have come to refer to as "The Street With A Lot of Temples". Altogether, five temples line a small stretch of road within paces of each other.

The party on Friday was perhaps the loudest at the Chong Ghee Temple, a cluster of three Chinese temples at the corner of Rivervale Crescent and Rivervale Drive.

Christopher Lee (left) with a white snake on his head and Fann Wong (beside him) at Chong Ghee Temple at Rivervale.
ST PHOTO: Zaihan Mohd Yusof

Devotees spilled out onto the streets enlivened by giant puppets bobbing to the reedy melody of Chinese trumpets.

They were celebrating the birthday of Guan Di, the temple's main Taoist deity; the elaborate puppet performance doubled as a prelude to the Hungry Ghost Festival, which begins on Thursday.

This August is an especially lively month for residents of this usually sleepy part of Sengkang.

Singaporeans from all over travel here to take part in the five temples' activities, choking the street with cars and the air with music, incense and prayers.

For Hindus, the period marks the religious month of Aadi, which falls on the fourth month of the Hindu calendar and celebrates several festivals for women and newly weds.

The Chinese are busy preparing for the seventh, or Ghost, month of their Lunar year. Temples everywhere have begun offering prayers and live entertainment to their devotees' dead relatives, whose spirits they believe visit them during this time.

It's not often the two religious celebrations overlap in the same month, and on Friday, residents added two more events to the display of worship in their street – the rare recruitment drive of the Heavenly Taoists, and a Buddhist funeral at Block 157D, where a brethren of monks clad in white robes chanted sutras through the evening.

The street finally fell silent only around 11pm, drawing mixed reactions from neighbourhood homebodies.

One resident, annoyed by all the "clanging and singing", described the night as "a bloody circus".

Mr Miqdad Mohammed, 45, a teacher, echoed the majority view when he said the noise level was louder than usual with the surge of visitors, but added that he did not mind it.

"This is the reality of living here," he said. "Anyway, it's okay, I used to think it was very loud but now I think most of us are used to it already."

In fact it took some time – and intervention – before residents like Mr Miqdad piped down their grievances.

When the Hindu temple was built here in 2006, several people said the temple's loud prayer music, which began as early as 6.30am, was unacceptable, and blamed it for the onset of crying babies, deteriorating school grades and diagnosed sleep disorders.

In 2007, the area's residents' committee chairman, Mr Tang Wing Fai, met with the secretary of the temple’s committee and reached a compromise – to start prayers only after 7am.

The two also met with leaders from the other temples, and separately urged their residents and devotees to be more patient and tolerant of their neighbours.

Two years on, the mediation appears to have worked. It may even have brought some residents closer.

On Friday, devotees at the Arulmigu Velnurugan Gnanamuneeswarar Temple, the Heavenly Tao Temple and the Chong Ghee Temple, were largely but not exclusively split by their ethnicities.

Indian women wrapped in bright, floral saris, and their husbands, sat among the attentive group that listened to Mr Tan preach his religion's gospel.

A few Chinese residents were having an evening chat with Hindu devotees outside their temple.

As for me, I've lived in Block 157D for three years now. With my family and many of my neighbours, I've grown accustomed to waking to prayer music in the mornings, and walking home taking in the smell of incense in the evenings.

But after visiting the five temples last week, I converted from being merely patient to feeling rather proud of my little neighbourhood's sample of Singapore's religious diversity.

I made some new friends, and took home flyers of the temples' year-long activities, which included dance workshops, religious study and meditation classes.

August and its month of festive celebrations will surely come and go, but this Sengkang resident is not quite ready for the party to be over.