During lunch Leo proudly displayed the big pulsing red heart that Chris had sent him earlier in the morning. There had been a series of exchanges and in the middle of the screen on Leo’s phone, a curvaceous, leaping, fit-to-burst symbol of their love — ❤️. It was 13 now, coming up 14 years that beautiful union of theirs. Chris was thirty-six years Leo’s junior, the same age as his son who had tragically lost his life. An age difference of zero consequence here. It reminded of Hasan up at the Haig couple days before, indicating his new girlfriend. Going for the bus, Has was not sighted at his usual place up front by the Paki tea stall. There he was in back in his motorised chair on the edge of the tables. When he spotted his friend Has scooped with his hand come hither. A new girl had suddenly arrived on the scene. Just a couple days before Hasan had complained about another lady playing him false, spotted by a pal in the company of some other fellow. Despite what it had seemed back then, the man had not been flattened. This one did not “play dirty”; this one was a goodie. Hasan motored up the aisle, wanting to point out the lady. He stopped at the row just behind a woman quietly sitting over her teh, late-30s, lashes, modest black attire. The scarved and bare-headed were evenly split at the tables; this one Hasan pointed out went without. Beaming like a schoolboy, the old player. It was striking. Back in the day, gawky mid-teens at school acted in that kind of manner, opening themselves up for possible ridicule. A grandfather in his late-70s, rather judgemental where women were concerned, Has was a goner for a lady who had popped up only in the last 48 hours. Next morning telling Halima of the matter after Hasan had turned up at Mr T T, Hal was more than a little stumped. Turning to look over the retreating figure in his PMD, Hal again asked for confirmation of the case. Finally, when she could reply, it was with a quizzical emoji face of the kind she often sent in her WhatsApps when words failed. It was too much for anything else, this. Shortly before that same morning, Yasuyuki the Bluesman had replied to a couple questions on how he was faring with a duck emoji, one that had not been seen previously. This was an upright, handsome, modest and nicely coloured fowl, clearly favoured in some way by the Jap muso. You had to conclude Yasu was doing not so bad; holding up OK. The bright-eyed bird suggested it. Otherwise, there was not much for the Bluesman to say, clearly. In Asia, and perhaps North Asia in particular, there was a bit of that circumspection: the indefinite, unspecified, equivocal case. It seemed some Chinese characters stood for ambiguous concepts of this nature. It was a long way from great or fantastic, or even not too bad. One needed to work it out from the indicators. The Javanese too could be people of few words. More than once Hal had described her father’s fixed quiet with the zipping of lips—finger & thumb drawn across the mouth. Sometimes even asked direct questions, Hal’s father could zip like that and sit tight, quite immovable; quite unable to be drawn to any utterance. There was something to be said for it. Not much garrulousness either gender, young & old both, the Chinese & Indo/Malay both. It was unclear how far the Indians fitted there.
Geylang Serai, Singapore 2011-26
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