Early Brekkie @ Muthu

Watching Yick Cheong over the road sweeping the entry-way to his store—a gold shop it had to be from memory. Brush-broom sweeping the lower entry and then upper pavement with a will, briskly, a shop-keeper in his early seventies. Tall, stringy version of the type, a former chain-smoker who had passed on the habit. One could not currently find any kind of help not from anywhere to swing a brush-broom with such earnest vigour; not from China, not India, nor even from Bangladesh or Myanmar. Rusted grill over the front set back two metres from the roadway and the rain; upstairs windows aluminum and darkened glass. In fairly recent time Yick had added the advertising board together with his neighbor Suria Creation perhaps. SMS Video Centre the other side of the lane and the old uncle and auntie Chinese fruiterers. Warna the prayer altar trader did not open till ten, the ripe and rippling pair of sisters or in-laws sweeping inside and out and following with mopping both entry-way and pavement above. Once the stage had been set there the prayers with bell and oil-burning flame began at the rear of the shop and came out onto the upper pavement. (Razali the Indian convert to Islam thanked Allah at each of the five daily prayers for having been brought the next stretch along the way in sound body and mind, he reported. In their rituals here the prayer altar gals were occupied otherwise.) The heavy old Indian security guard had fronted for duty at Yick’s—a gold shop no need crossing to confirm. A couple of Indian lasses, pair of sisters or mother and daughter, had second thoughts about breakfast at Muthu under the eye of the foreigner. On reflection they preferred one row back and partly screened in order to enjoy their repast in peace.