Guiding Light

Some crossed wiring yesterday with the Chinese and Indians kinda on the same page, for all that there were different texts laid out before them. Unexpectedly, at lunchtime a queue had formed inside the entry at KV, crowded tables in both of the rooms. When a place was eventually found the old Tamil opposite came to tell of his textiles business story; in childhood the man had lived a few doors down in Buffalo Road, where in the 50s the whole street had been wall-to-wall sari shops. Nothing but saris. That particular Buffalo branch of Komala had opened after the success of the first restaurant around the corner on Serangoon Road. Lots of women at the tables, pretty ones here and there what was more. As a consequence some confusion arose about the public holiday: Was it Monday, CNY Eve, and then the Tuesday, the big family dinner, for the designated national holiday?... No, the cashier Auntie informed. The Eve was usually a half-day holiday for the Chinese, many of whom would take the whole day off. The designated holiday was the day following, and then the next; ie. the first day of the new lunar month, Tuesday, and the day after, Wednesday. Alright. Sorted. Truth be told, in fact all three traditions, Buddhist, Hindu & Muslim, were up the creek without a paddle here pretending there was a moon riding the clouds upstairs. All highly elusive that orbit on the Equator; notional more or less. On the equator the new moon often failed to appear in any quarter of the sky when it was supposed to. The physicist Mr. Mohd. from Georgetown, Penang (studies in Adelaide) had some years before regulated the Muslim calendar, establishing for the S-E Asian Tropics the proper, mathematical phases of the bright lamp. Still, for all that, some of the die-hard Muslim traditionalists insisted on optical sightings, simply could not reconcile to other than eyeing the heavenly body themselves. These chaps, deeply pious, venerable religious heads and the like, climbed up into towers and searched from rooftops high and low across the skies of the cities here in the old way of their forefathers. With the same new moon marked on the Hindu calendar, the cashier Auntie at Komala explained, the people had that morning gone to prayers, and lunch later following. Therefore the unexpected crowd along Serangoon Road, outside Tekka and in the restaurant. Just as elsewhere on the island the Chinese were hurrying along with their boxes of mandarins, their pomelos and red hangbao packets.