Pillows & Blankets

Gone half ten after a circuit for the newspaper. Two 7-Elevens and two street stalls had turned up nada. The reliable fifth stop was up on Jalan Trus opposite the Johor Bahru Old Chinese Temple. Was the New Straits Times a touch better or more comprehensive than The Star? Golly the factory product produced at politico HQ! Could Pravda ever have been as bad? Politika in middle-late Yugoslavia seemed quite a few notches above in the 1980s while there still remained some belief in the federation. This morning it was worth the trek for the coverage of Maria's release from prison, the leader of the opposition demonstrations ten days kept in solitary. Front page was a tinge of yellow, the protest colour, but within that cloud a smiling PM resplendent in red polka dot tie and matching handkerchief in the breast-coat pocket.  En route two trash fossickers, one on Jalan Wong Ah Fook and the other out front of Muthu, both surprising by the passable attire they wore. Such chaps no longer make one wince each and every time, not necessarily. More than all the others, more than the cripples, the dark foreign salt-mine labourers and the trafficked trannies, in recent weeks the ones afflicting the mind most strongly on these streets of the old town were the Paki and Bangla pillow-hawkers carting their colourful product round and round. Good quality over-stuffed articles wrapped in plastic in each hand and hanging from straps on their backs. At the cool, wet end of year the men had been laden with floor mattresses, blankets and bed-sheets of the same bright colours and design. Last night one of the bearded chaps had stopped to chat to a working girl under the columns on Ah Fook, recognizing a compatriot possibly, or else trying his miserable luck.
            .... Spoke too soon too. After breakfast and the newspaper a poor blighted old girl missing her two front teeth came jigging along the pavement to the song blaring from the store up from Muthu. A long white fabric that might have served overnight as a blanket she had draped over her poor stricken head. The dress of chocolate embroidered with gold trim recalled better days. In mismatched flip-flops standing in front of the Restoran mouthing into the street, rocking and swaying. Did she actually have the coin to pay for the sachet of milk at Muthu, or was it provided by the lads?
            Ten minutes later Yick's security guard jumping up to move the witches-hats for the late arriving Merc at Warna altars raised the stakes further still. In forty-five days of breakfasts there opposite that ponce in his chariot has not alighted and dirtied his own fingers even once.