Slow-stepping evening looking out from the usual post in the half hour either side of 7. The usual salmon pink band low through the trees was caught the other day reproduced in a night-scape at a "social enterprise" gallery on one of the floors at Bras Basah Complex. (An successful local artist had established the space in order to promote serious art to a public in need of guidance, the manager explained.)
Rarely does the salmon appear before 7, sometimes preceded by apricot & faint rose-pinks. Invariably, maximum effect was achieved when the blue-greys pressed from the sides in larger forms of their own. Always low and thin the bands, something to do with the Equator no doubt. Here there was nothing like the blushes of the same tone one gets down on the great Southern land.
Through the creeping half hour the pavement trees loom, their dark, textured trunks and branches stark emanations, as if newly arrived from elsewhere..
In that light the Paya Lebar Post Office appears a newly berthed ship, descended from the air rather than any uncharted waters in that particular clearing; perhaps one of those unexplained ancient structures from a lost civilisation, of which there is no knowledge, Borobudur & the like. (The region here holds a good number.)
This was an alien presence in the midst of mysterious remnant forest, first contact strongly suggested. An early nineties inspiration, fifteen or twenty years behind the examples elsewhere on the globe. One of the numerous “iconic” structures across the city.
Daylight hours, with the greater volume of traffic and its road-noise, with the punishing heat and the greys of the structure's cladding merging with the sky, the Post Office loses much of its sinister effect.
The brief passage of dusk gives an inkling of the past prior to the recent leap of the three short decades. Central & Hyde Parks would no doubt provide similar momentary escapes from the worst outrages of modernity.
On the ground there last night looking out in the usual half-narcotic state, the attention was distracted by the show the Deaf was putting on in the corner beside Mr. Yahya's music racks. Two tables held a dozen old men, with the Kalimantan regular among them taking advantage of the fried pisang & teh.
On occasion a dozen & half or more surrounded the little showman and gathered all their pleasure of the afternoon from the routine he delivered. What delight the little chap offered, what a hole filled by his mastery.
Remember Reader, not a drop of alcohol hereabout. Neither had this generation been captured by pictures and noise from electric boxes. Reading matter was rare for men of action, forest-dwellers previously, living in sprawling families under atap roofs. Fridays after the mosque the chaps all in their best attire; slow dance Malay Lounge from the speakers of Angel's Department Store next door to Labu Labi; the heat passing.
Mr. Yahya—John the Baptist in the Christian tradition, equally recognised as an early Prophet by Muslims—aka Angel—puts it on especially Fridays for the lads, even though he himself, Mr. Yahya, never sits among this contingent in their flat-caps, cowboy shirts & shiny cow-horn belt-buckles.
One can easily hear the Balkan accordion re-arrangement, Esma Redžepova’s plaintive gypsy love-blight, in place of the modulated Malay.
A short while later the unmistakeable March on the Drina in yet another of the numerous half-hidden echoes of the other lost world recalled on the Equator.
The old men in the audience are all well into their seventies and more than one tipped beyond. All except the grey-haired old Queen-type in his Malay bright blouse, walking-stick and lubricious lips. Almost certainly some of the tightly screwed flat-caps covered egg-bald pates that would be embarrassing to reveal to all and sundry; the mullets behind were always kept in perfect trim and glistening dark coal. Most are clean-shaven, when the more devout give themselves the thin wispy beards that the Prophet recommended in order to distinguish genders. Tees and shorts eschewed by this group. Virtually all the shirts were long-sleeved; shoes, not sandals or flip-flops.
Smokers, lifting dazzling large stones set in their rings. One infrequent member carried a rock that stood an inch from the knuckle—$14,000 worth, one chap declared; another that same evening whispered big-eyed, fully $20k.
None of this generation have licenses for motors. They bus out from their pigeon-holes in Jurong and further afield Fridays & weekends in particular. The stalwarts have full-time membership at Labu Labi, never missing.
A good part of the dissolution of these chaps can be seen in their entertainment of the Batam Indo gals 30 - 40 years their junior. In their quarters they offer accommodation to the transient visitors.
Some of the girls might pass from one household to another without need of winks or handshakes. What was left the morally upright than outrage and condemnation, for all that the stipulated three honest witnesses might be difficult to find for the purpose of official proceedings?
Often the Deaf needs to rise from his chair to properly display his routine. This afternoon a kind of chattering monkey-call with various modulations sounded in trills up & down the tables. Gleaming bright faces were turned to the showman. At one point an old chap in his late-seventies, if not beyond, crowned with a white songkok, was evidently failing in the little play and needed to be taken by the forefinger, slowly & deliberately the particular word spelt out on the table-top letter by careful letter, until it was got.
— Arrhh!
Produced more laughter again in another spurt.
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