Ol’ McDonald in Penang

 

At the earlier hour the street market was more crowded than usual. After the cool overnight the faces were less drawn and haggard; more people had ventured out. Understandably on a working day, it was a mostly older crowd, more hand- and arm-holding, even for those not needing physical support. 

One had become accustomed to the sight of the maid doing the shopping, escorting the elderly and helping them along. Quite often able-bodied Madams were taken in arm precisely as the girls would do back home with their own mothers, aunts, sisters and friends. One Indo this morning relieved her middle-aged Ma’am of the shopping bag, transferred it to her left hand and taking her charge with the other, the pair set off in stride. Like so the two took to the outdoors each day, a settled, comfortable arrangement. 

One brief glance from the girl showed her puzzlement at the gawping.

On the first round a newspaper vendor in her yellow & red company bib, holding her stack against her chest, called out in such an odd chirp that a look was needed to make sure the sound was indeed given by the lady. A small bird landed on one of the branches above would not have surprised. In her turn of head the woman strongly suggested the bird; tone, pitch and repetition likewise. 

Wags in markets with their practiced quips were common. One fellow that morning sat with what must have been his mother at a fresh sea-food stall, she down on a stool prizing open cockles, working with a gloved hand and the other levering with her tool. 

On his side the lad sat taller, behind a cleaned, nakedly white turtle or crab of some kind. A foreigner staring fixedly made an easy target.

— Water chicken.

On the return leg an older Chinese opposite the same pair suddenly broke into song. 

You needed to recall the distant past back home for anything comparable. 

Carrying a song while walking the street or in the course of daily tasks was nothing unusual in these parts. Songs here that came entirely from within—no radio or other player involved.

This particular chap stood at his stall. What he sold was missed. Square-jawed, with a larger build than the average Chinaman. 

This husband and father could have fed his family in younger days with hard, taxing labour. Coif dyed a lustrous jet-black, bushy eye-brows matched. Recently visited the barber. 

An older Chinese woman had stopped before the vendor and was turning over some of the articles. No need of engagement. Rather, the man turned a little aside, lifted his head and delivered a verse, or the first line of a verse, into the narrow passage-way.

Ol' McDonald had a farm... 

Faultlessly in the old established clip-clop, pulling out the final vowel. 

The man bit off his last note too in the way schoolchildren elsewhere had learned, chorusing the old favourite. 

There was nothing further. Subsequent lines might not have sprung so effortlessly. 

In the kind of transport the tune had induced it would not have surprised if after that the chap had passed to the full repertoire. Mary had a Little Lamb, the Twinkling Star & the rest. 

British administered GeorgeTown, Penang, before the Federation of Free Malaysian States fifty and more years ago, had followed the established regime in place right across that old Empire on which the sun never did set. 

Still, it was surprising in that Asian guise after such a time, with such radically other ways and manners evident.