Santa’s Reindeer
(The first Christmas in Singapore)
Soon after the bend of the Kallang River on the bus a middle-aged Indian was caught at her orisons a moment too late. When the observation fell on her, her eyes were just re-opening, palms rising to her forehead.
The look she showed on her face one could not any longer find on the city streets; its faking in the movies was the closest approximation. A particular moment of sexual abandon produced something of the kind, part release and part concentration. It was a remarkable, brief glimmer.
Beyond the open grassy field after the river a temple sat marooned on a street corner. The plot of land and the building it held were about the size of a standard suburban subdivision. The tall, stuccoed front fence was painted a fawn colour and along the parapet on top lazy white cows, elephants and snake charmers were evenly spaced.
Worshipers at Sri Manmatha came from a distance, there was little housing in the immediate vicinity. The woman on the bus must have been a newcomer, suddenly catching the sight while gazing out the window.
Over a coffee at Starbucks shortly after the re-arranged big-number Christmas carols were being held over for the lunch crowd. For some reason this morning the blades of the larger windmill in the display beside the fountain had been removed. The resulting hole at the top of the tower didn't stop the photographers; with some care, at that height the hole would not be visible in any of the snaps.
Across the way at McD’s there was an even larger crowd. At the busy thoroughfare at the main junction of the Bugis Complex, shoppers passed thick and fast. In that dead corner opposite the fountain one would have expected the Nativity scene perhaps; it was about the right scale and might have been tucked in place without hampering the foot traffic. Instead, this sketch of a kind of rural idyll from the Northern hemisphere. The windmills referenced the water spurting adjacent; that might have been the logic.
From the perspective of Singapore, the Netherlands was not too far distant from the Pole.
The windmill was covered in mirror shards, both the column and blades. A smaller windmill stood to the right and a kind of salt cellar on the other side were wrapped in aluminium, a couple of yellow stars topping. Three reindeer had come up to the forecourt of Santa's cubby, one down on its haunches, with arched back.
It was the reindeer that gave the firmest clue. Two of the animals were black with white spots; the other larger one reversed the colouring, head back and finished with an upturned, red button-nose. Three little dark pines completed the setting, the whole sitting on a carpet of green that was more moss than grass.
With all the captivation of the screens, it was a wonder the children gave the corner any mind at all.
The final hint of the season came with the pair of ladders resting on the inside wall of the large windmill. Tall, tapered and silvered, these disappeared into the top of the black felt interior. Fairy lights were strung from one tower to another—in the evening illumination the whole glittering scene would produce a stronger effect.
The 24 x 7 cycle might have begun already, or perhaps the Minister of Culture would visit at midnight for an official lighting. Twenty-five sleeps until Christmas.
The wavery gold lettering over the arched doorway of Santa’s retreat needed some eyeing. Angled over the curved surface and following the boomerang line made the deciphering difficult from a little distance.
One was always off-balance here too with the English usage, in the case of advertising and promotion in particular.
GO GAGA
this christmas
Linear on the page robbed half the effect.
Singapore 2011-23
NB. Eastern Orthodox Christmases, at least a couple of generations past, were entirely different to the Western consumerist make-over. In the case of the first Christmas in Singapore, the transposition involved in that tropical production was something else again.
