Joss Stick

A paper shirt! young Neil comes upon on Geylang, making the discovery in an instant. How did he know it was paper just passing casually like that?

         The shirt was wrapped in plastic display pack with firm backing. Fixed and rigid, nothing to indicate the material. The colouring was unusual, muted kind of hippy flower tones—pale sky-blue, faded pink and tainted vanilla. The button-down collar was another colour. Ruffs in a panel down the front to go under an unimaginable dinner jacket.

         Unlike at any other shop-front here, the woman in back remained at her station, uninterested in the customers.

         Overhead hung large, what seemed like plastic tip-trucks, also wrapped in cellophane. Some pairs of flip-flops, as they are called now, glossy and ornate. Understandably, Neil was puzzled.

         The shop signage was in Chinese characters; nothing in English. Not so exceptional on Geylang. The interior of the shop seemed to give a warning in that particular tone of Buddhist red. Were apples that colour in childhood—not toffee apples, apples from the tree? or had that been only picture-books? Fire engine red was close; Santa's tone too. A signal colour that transcends culture, never quite capturing the vividness of blood.

         It took a time to recall the previous trip here two years ago. Nance had been the guide then, a reluctant one at a similar shop at another location.

         Bundles of what could only be play-money, of some forbidding kind, mounted on a table inside the entry. The piles of shirts, the toy trucks and the rest were out on the footpath. They would need to be brought in at the end of the trading day. For some unfathomable reason, as if they were the prime lures, these articles were given the prominent position along the walk-way.

         On one wall inside a darker red, a crimson, of packaged incense sticks. Were they called joss sticks, this particular kind? The other night it had occurred to Nancy that Geylang Road gathered a remarkable array of commerce. Further up there was a shop of this kind beside a karaoke bar one side and car-tyre outlet the other.

         Even this second time round with Neil and Emily the wrong conclusions were drawn.  

         Wasn't the tendency everywhere to give the departed the best possible send-off? Little business empires had of course been built on the practice, this kind of shop a case in point. Wouldn't the paper tear trying to get it on?

         Cremation was only recalled months afterward, and the regular days of offering learned about after that. In the East burial was the exception.