East Pakistan

What better place to pick up a breakfast bowl than Mustafa Centre on Serangoon Road. Difficult to beat for price on any staple item or brand; usually. Afterward one might round from there to Usman for an early supper before the break-of-fast crowd landed. Starting with masala tea for the parade from the corner perch, table nearest the front, followed by single naan, dahl & potato. Perfection. With a fridge in the new digs cereal in Singapore, a French unsweetened soy sourced at the local NTUC supermarket (union run in order to keep prices down for the common folk, supposedly, which in Sing' means a government operation, stemming back to the far distant past when the People's Action Party—bolt of lightning insignia—professed itself Democratic Socialist… The grand old man of the region, approaching a ripe old ninety and publishing yet another book of pearls this week here, blurbs from George Schultz and Henry K.)

         The breakfast bowl. The Thieves had nothing. Mr. Teh Tarik would kindly provide the spoon, unless cheap ceramic could be found.

         Up the lane behind Desker the working grannies were not observing the fast, tucking in while they watched overhead TV. In the low lounge chairs some of them looked as if they would be incapable of rising to their feet without a hoist. Make-up & costume jewellery would be cheap at Mustafa too.

         Second thoughts, the Bangladeshi row on Lembu Road opposite grassless Bangla Park was an idea. Prices there would be cheaper still.

         Some kind of mufti type was blaring from the screen turned onto the street toward the park, where a dozen lads were gathered on the opposite footpath, watching and listening. Nothing like the dramas that gather three or four score men on a Sunday, but decent crowd just the same.

         Lazy late afternoon, thin crowds, the usual clientele still toiling on their construction sites. Very little activity in the middle of Ramadan. How did the chaps, for all the strength of youth, for all their hardiness and conditioning, how did they manage 12-14 hour shifts without food or water?

         A trifle head-buffeted with the memory of the early PAP, those days before the ship of state was turned…Harry Lee. Might there come a belated bedside confession and recanting at the last gasp, even if suppressed afterward, servant or body-guard eavesdropping and getting the story out...The food-taster who had been retained all those years, coughing it up finally! Stranger things come to pass.

         Coming along innocently, yet to arrive at the beginning of the provision row, a little odd pavement scene capturing the attention and finally drawing one to a complete halt, there in the middle of the walkway. What was this here, hey.

         One certainly does not like being a sticky-beak. Luckily no-one paid the observer the slightest attention. (The author has found this matter rather surprising in the Tropics: people going about their business, doing precisely as they please, when a fellow, a complete stranger, can stand off two or three metres looking on completely without regard from the side. Density of living perhaps; one of the little local quirks. The density of Sing', HK, Shanghai, Rio, not without affect.)

         The actors here were unusual for one thing. Almost certainly the women an Indon pair, or otherwise Malay, here at the Bangla row in some kind of particular, close engagement.

         And what, mind you, was a Chinese doing manning a Bangladeshi shop in the quarter? 

         All the shops along Lembu were Bangla operations, all without exception. Or at the very least most certainly not Chinese. The Chinese doubtless owned the buildings, the entire row more likely than not. This was little Dhaka in goods and product, sold by the natives of those parts and purchased by the same.

         If the fellow wasn't entirely Han, if he was Burmese or Peranakan (Malay-Chinese), he was certainly not Bangladeshi. Nor Tamil, Arab or Pakistani.

         Safe to say Chinese, sitting in his high chair on the walkway with a cupboard of goods before him looking out onto paved Bangla Park and the collection of lads watching the televisions.

         Two scarved, traditionally garbed Indons about his own height and proportions stopped before him, the first and lead wordlessly extending her hand and giving the briefest rub of thumb to her ring finger. Not the forefinger or middle; the ring.

         Brief. Blink and you missed it. Drug deals in other locales—not Singapore—have been witnessed many a time with less finesse, less panache.

         This was louche, lay-back cool like movies rarely achieve. Where did the gal develop it? One imagined her at a poker table. It was really something.

         The face was averted. A corner of chin, jaw-bone, nothing of the eyes.

         Under the covered walkway a shaft of light from an unseen fissure in the cloud over the park illuminated only the woman's palm and fingers, fabric of skin the kind of effect Caravaggio achieved.

         Phone cards the chap might have had in his front cupboard, like many of the other traders here; or else the betel leafpaan the Banglas favoured.

         Was this a drug deal after all? The betel leaf was a mild intoxicant, as well as hunger suppressant. Women had never been seen in these parts chewing and spitting the juice. These ladies did not look especially poor.

         No need words of any sort. Highly unlikely the pair shared any common language with this fellow. Even the Bahasa these women spoke would not have been their national, administrative language. They were from the sticks somewhere, remote kampungs.

         Clearly the man had comprehended everything regardless. It looked nothing like conventional begging. Fascinating.

         A mismatch of some kind. It was all wrong. Rarely were there beggars of any sort seen around Serangoon Road. True, the Malays in Geylang Serai often remarked on the Chinese beggar or tissue seller making a bee-line for the Muslim quarter, where they would get better regard.

         Nothing like it along Serangoon on two-three dozen prior visits. Four dozen.

         Immediately the man had understood. It was possible his eyes had not even fallen on the hand and fingers. The attunement here was perfect.

         Man rising from his seat, using the cross-bar of the tall chair for leverage; then lifting the glass top of the cupboard. Within the compartment fishing for a moment. Two and three and more moments. One-handed, plucking or pinching with his fingers.

         An rather inordinate stretch. Had the man been fishing on a line by a riverbank there would have arrived a catch in that time.

         It was possible the hand would emerge empty here in frustration, the game given away.

         Finally it looked like something. One strained to catch the miniature.

         Craning forward as discreetly as possible, careful not to lurch too far. Two twenty cent pieces. Approximately the size of tens in the great Southern land at time of departure from those shores.

         A twenty each, pressed onto one palm and then the second.

         On the current exchange rate at time—Friday 26 July 2013—a fraction over seventeen Australian cents.

         No complaints either side. Nods may have been made, more with the eyes than heads proper.

         Fifteen cents effectively, with the discontinuation of twos and ones how many years.

         The author has known beggars to turn their noses up at much more. In Singapore, Changi Road, one cross-eyed importunate Chinaman who wears his tops rolled half-way up his belly, grunting and surly, owed a living he seems to think, has turned over a shiny Singaporean 50 cent piece and left it behind.

         Off the pair of women trotted to the next place a few doors down. A short while later they were seen passing on Serangoon Road. Busy bees, much to do, indefatigable.

         The afternoon was singing now, some kind of order and harmony restored.

         In the end a little fire-engine red doggy bowl was purchased. $1:60-70. The Malay or Indon pair would have bargained and driven the price down. (The pair would have eaten with their fingers, mind, from grease-proof brown paper, cereal and muesli like rice and chicken the same. Easier than plate servings at all the street stalls in Singapore.)

         At the register a couple of chaps engaged in conversation; something of matter. Lembu Road the same.

         The older before the register; younger back turned to the shop facing his friend.

         — ...1947 to ‘71...

         One was made to wonder at all kinds of matters in the human field.

         The stated was an unusual period. 1947-1971.

         This particular time-frame had almost certainly never been heard before.

         …Shortly after the war. On the cusp of the first Whitlam government in Australia, after the unbroken conservative rule.

         But of what relevance was this in Asia?

         1947-1971?....

         A few secs required revolving the red plastic disk. Checking workmanship, as it were.

         From the shelf where the bowls were stacked over to the register in front, another second and one half was needed.

         Ah. Yes! Got it. Of course.

         On Lembu Road opposite Bangla Park only one possible answer, lay you fifty to one.

         — East Pakistan.

         The pair of robed men was more than a little surprised of course. Startled more than a trifle.

         In East Pakistan they had lasted a third of the time of the Yugoslavs.