Owings Discharged

Old ibu owns a mere 70 when she looks a dead-set 80++. BP sometimes 150 has her worried. Long face and gap-toothed. On the other side the old crow guesses right off five fingers and, god damn her to high heaven! another finger raised on the other hand, all with judicial air like some ancient of Dürer. Such indecently good English. Mystified however why she gets so tired. Doc tells her not to worry, take a seat when she’s pooped and then go again. Terms her opposite number uncle if you can believe, like a near contemporary! You stay where?... Seems jealous hearing the reply. Herself she’s out in god forsaken McPherson rather than the Bedok that was guessed. Some kinda liniment for reviving that brought back the football change rooms before a game, the seniors more than us juniors. Dürer’s subjects sometimes looked like figures of fate like this one. Noodles for lunch had been bought by Ni at Bugis, two packs for a dollar. Sometimes there were specials at that outlet when three were offered. The dish Ni prepared for lunch included both servings for her big bule lover. It had been the usual strong clutching both sides for the love-making with Ni after a two week absence. Of late the best means of achieving the end was keeping the gal firm and tight, not allowing her the usual hammering on top she preferred that quickly robbed all feeling. Hard clamp on the lower back with periodic short, short thrusts. Sometimes nature programs depicted the like for various animals: to an outside viewer there was almost no motion apparent. Prior to the escape for a cup of teh the hungry gal had started in again hoping for a second episode, perhaps wary of being robbed of the opportunity in the remaining time. Not far off the aspect of Aunt Andje at the first visit to Boka the old crone in the corner. She had appeared like a sudden bird of augury without making a sound. Damned if she was all Malay. Not an ounce of differences from our classic form, with the scarf of course included. Today they were due to cart the litije, the church banners from St. George and Our Lady up in the village down the 24kms to the Savina Monastery for safe keeping, cousin Zoran had emailed. There was growing protest against the local Montenegrin ecclesiastical authorities which were seeking to separate from the neighbouring brother Serbs. Zoran was a strong supporter of unity with the latter; passionately against the divisive push. Ni had returned the last of her loan today too, money that had been advanced for her air ticket here for the new job. The first hundred dollars had been returned a month ago; now after the hangbao of CNY, when Ni had cooked for over a hundred guests over the week, the remaining hundred discharged the balance. Guests of the household had given the cook red packets of two, five and ten dollars in some cases, totalling altogether $174. In the lead up to the week the new Madam had raised false hopes for Ni, reporting over three hundred dollars collected by the previous maid the year before. Many of course did far better than $200-300. Still, Ni was perfectly at home in this house, sweet with the pianist daughter and also the son, who both called her kaka, elder sister. Sir and Ma’me were no trouble, just a little picky sometimes the latter.  New crisp notes for the balance of Ni’s loan, a fifty, three tens and ten twos that made a bulge in the pocket. For NY offerings only new notes would do. 

Creaming

Porsche drivers have no need to look out their windows. There’s nothing as fascinating as their own selves inside their curvaceous capsules, what have they got to look at? We do the rubbernecking. Occupied with biz, meetings & events, they keep their focus straight ahead where they are going, no time to lose, no vacant mooning. Sometimes you get young guys roaring down the streets in their red & burnt orange models, but it’s the oldies who do it right in their plain whites and creams, who do it most regally, like practiced regents on the thrones. They don’t have to have the latest cuts or dyes these guys, necklaces, chains or rocks. Smooth and perfectly steady the chap in the older model stopped at the lights on Jalan Besar this afternoon, nondescript, if not positively ugly (rather in the form of Godard).... Has there ever been sighted a female driver in all these years? Why have they all gravitated to those other, lesser coupes? So long you assumed they were French, before a Bavarian g-friend corrected.

Transnational

Almost biblical proportion locusts in East Africa, storms in Brazil, the China virus, quakes and eruptions in a number of places, and down in Oz where the fires continued high 30s/40s forecast on the weekend. And this was forgetting for a moment the wars that were unceasing. There had been not the merest mention of the latter in today’s paper. It had been Mr. Modh. from Joo Chiat Complex, going back to his digs on his bicycle, who had reminded to add them to the list of concerns. In one of the newspaper articles a volunteer fire fighter in New South Wales reported flames crowning 150m above tree tops and embers the size of grapefruit…. After eight years here amid all the new fruits intro-ed to the palate and the brain, it was actually impossible now to visualise a grapefruit. It would simply not come back. Neither the size nor the texture. Was there a large seed within like for an avocado or mango? Had grapefruit been roughly the size and shape of a persimmon, or the smaller sour sop? Pomelo or durian, even smaller ones, were unlikely. Jackfruit of course was out of the question. Five hours later it was still a complete blank. Grapefruits had been missed if they had ever sat on the shelves of the supermarkets here; certainly there were none at Geylang Serai market. You had been a transnational from way, way back of course. All the way back to the beginning. Now you were a right proper one. (And weren’t we all.)

Helter Shelter

To be fair, one could not accuse the government of failing to deliver; that would be unjust. Deliver they most certainly do, in spades often. Sing’ can-do spirit; Chinese tiger variety. A couple years ago billboard announcements of two hundred kilometres of additional sheltered walkway to be erected on the little red dot hot spot. Duly accomplished it seemed. This afternoon Tufail the Kashmiri had messaged from his office in Toa Payoh, “finally some rain.” The mountaineer had felt the lack. It had not even been hot; the usual mild January. In Lt. India after lunch there had been no sign. From Rowell Street craning round in the chair at the Cyber nothing doing, nor any darkening either. Oh well, lucky you young Tuf. Wending back on the bus shortly after, after the finest of sprays footing across to Lavender, suddenly, belatedly, a proper pelting. Road noise and the aircon had made it inaudible at first. Gee! And no payung. It had looked all clear setting out. Well, a pisser getting stuck at a stop waiting. Bugger. Damn. There was work waiting. Can’t gripe now, steady on. One had Fanon in the bag. An excellent companion, come rain, hail or shine. Into the last quarter now, tremendous lyricism, of the kind that could only be delivered by someone with sizeable stake in the matter. Skin. Sartre’s Preface had been excellent too. Another volume Zainuddin had foisted. The Tariq Ali novel of Muslim Spain had immediately preceded; pretty crummy in that case, apart from the intriguing history delivered. So many gaps in the knowledge. It had been the battle of Poitiers that had stemmed the Muslim tide on the Western half of the continent; that show all over and resolved before the Eastern half had even gotten properly under way. Seven hundred years the Alhambra had lasted. Even Greece had only been occupied six hundred. Constantinople. Vizantium. Kosovo Field. Tzar Lazar… A Montenegrin found much of interest. Was Tariq in fact a gay man? Published thirty years ago, a great deal of concentration on that element. Not that it mattered either way. Dreary sex scenes—pine tree metaphors, coconuts &etc. Like in Tzarist times, slave girls/serfs taken willy-nilly brought Count Leo to mind. In Tariq A. a beautiful lass had avoided the attention of the young master of the house by pleading her menstruation. Girls raped and torched in India in the news again. Tufail’s parents were searching for a suitable wife in Srinigar for their boy. In his late twenties, it was becoming dangerous for Tuf being confronted by all the uncovered flesh in  Singapore. A week ago the lad had escorted a Batam lady over to the market during a downpour. First time girl under my umbrella, Tufail reported back. It had not rained in fact since that day. Decent pour now. When the doors opened at the stops the strength of it was conveyed. Damn! Nuisance… But, hey! Wait on a minute. No. The 197 this was. Yes; it was not the 7 that continued along Sims Avenue. Here we were then, a ride on offer right the way round to Tanjong Katong Mall, where the recently completed sheltered walkway from the stop for your convenience… Not to fear. Cover virtually unbroken right the way to the doorstep. Thirty metres from the Mall to Geylang corner. At the join to the section fetching East for some reason a panel overhead was missing, one metre square only. Duck left there. Thirty plus thirty plus thirty metres—three stab passes of the football, that included a crossing of the service road  for the carpark. The overpass at the Haig crossed the four lanes of Geylang Road—up, down and around by the stop. The market. The row of shops. Out the back by Block 10. It helped to know the way, otherwise it would have been a merry dance. Were one headed to any one of the 14 Blocks, you were home and hosed without a single drop on your person. Sheltered all the way; entirely cloistered. In this particular case, needing to reach a “landed property,” a bungalow, there was a final twenty metre dash. By Block 9 the high eave of the adjacent utility building gave shelter. Mind the pigeon droppings there! Pavers with good grip in order to reach the tree on the corner. From which point it was 15-20 metres to the front veranda of the house. Ha! Walk in the park. A breeze. Easy as pie. It was often said, by dainty girls in print dresses in particular, If it were not for the PAP, we’d be like Indonesia or Malaysia. In the sun and rain of the unforgiving Tropics, man had triumphed over adversity and obstacles like nowhere else.

 

 

                                                                                                Geylang Serai, Singapore 2011-2020

Soggy, Unappetising Lunch at the Haig

10-15min. sitting you wondered at the blare. Seemed to be emanating from the toilet block, unusually. Nuisance of a thing pumping like that, golden oldies forever and a day without let up. The place could not possibly function without this syrup dished up for the populace. It was a conspiracy that could be managed in a small city-state, far more effective than traditional propaganda. The supermarket would need to be abandoned altogether shortly, it was simply unendurable within those walls. One day before you knew it you’d find yourself tearing down the aisles swinging your arm through the shelves one after another. Horrid vomit-inducing 60s piddle that sent you reeling, —well, that truth to tell one had kinda liked in junior years before some little shafts of light had penetrated the mental thicket. That was one thing, the particular genre; in the supermarkets the added on top was the chipmunk announcers sledgehammering and pulverising with their patter. Murder most foul and dastardly. Seemed almost inhuman. Imagine a boy or girl in school back in the day squeaking like that! Sounded like radio, when in fact it was produced by the chain specifically for in-store broadcast…. Don’t fooor-get tooo re-MEM-ber me. You actually sang along with that lollipop once upon a time, you did, you did don’t deny it; or at least in your head you did after it had stuck there like gum to your shoe. I STILL re-MEM-ber you…. They caught you out here, forced you to recollect your primordial, pitiful self.... Eventually the true culprit responsible for the broadside at the last Haig row here swung by to reveal himself, an old dapper Malay of the usual form, though in this case an unfamiliar in that neighbourhood. Recent trim and coal dye; mid-seventies passing for early or just-turned. New barely laundered black polo bearing lustrous gold braiding. Got himself a fancy fold-out bicycle the dude and a sound system that would demolish a housing tower were it deployed on one of the Voids. If he had won the lottery obtaining a driving license was outta the question for this old cowhand. Chap escorted his shiny wheels like a fine lady on his arm, by the front table and slowly ambling up the path. At that first table two or three heavy Batam gals in their long gowns were being shared by the crocs on the stools. Whisperings, squeezed out modest smiles, waiting and hanging chiefly along there in the usual way. As the songster drew one foot after another by the group pulling his wheels, the man turned toward the general assembly and like the crooners of old, like the old uncles on the talent shows and the faded stars on TV reprising their hits of yesteryear, the Uncle here gleamed ivory bright. Some of the old men had retained their own choppers and almost uncannily perfect condition (it was often difficult to pick the falsies). With the benefit of that radiance Unc here mouthing clearly and unmistakably the more plangent segment of the old song’s refrain, —AND the love…. that USED…. to be. Uncle had numerous former loves near at hand in memory, none had slipped. Judges on TV talent shows exhorted contestants to put more feeling into their performance, pour out the heart’s burden like they really meant it. This uncle channeled without trouble all the sweets he had collected and given over the years with deepest conviction, the most jaded judge would have credited. The volume of the music box was too loud to attempt challenge (rocket-ship class batteries); even a professionally prepared younger throat might have failed in that regard. The miming here would have been impossible for a viewer to discern on any kind of screen. If the man had meant the lyric for one of the Indo ladies she would need to make a claim herself in order to seize as Unc had cast into the general body of the hall, well over the heads of the near group.

A Pitcher (Mar25)

Wouldn’t mind betting the new Uncle here collecting the dishes at Kwan Inn was the prodigal son of the owner, the locally famous lady who took the casino to court over a disputed win and distributed the award to her employees. Good, proper Buddhist ahma, dealing in vegetarian fare, catching rainwater for the dish-washing, considerate and generous to her staff. Fair chance the monks frequenting her tables got their meals for nix. The entire block was occupied by Buddhist outlets of one sort or another—books, fragrance, candles, calendars, lanterns, &etc. The silver spoon was another kettle of fish altogether, running up against it in the usual way and coming a cropper, you would guess. Very much got that look about him. Tall, thin scarecrow pulling deeply on the fags on his short breaks on the grass. Chap was one apart, entirely different class compared to the others clearing those tables & dicing the vegetables. There were no tattoos visible, neat dyed cut and tidy manner—nothing street level and pigeon-hole about him. The wide smiles were something in excess of ease and gratitude over the simple, everyday offerings gifted us. Purest silk the batik shirt the other day might have been; NY motif linen today and smart trainers didn’t come from collecting dishes. Not long ago the man had been wrestling fire-breathing dragons, if this Scribe knows anything from years on the sidelines watching the skittles fall all round. Get a load of that silver on his hand for another thing; and the watch-face between the jade beads. Laid down the law the old lady; lad holding firm to date, quick on his feet working with a will and no complaints. Just returned from a retreat in the hills of Taiwan, or even the Mainland, possibly. Few biz types got to the tables on Sims Ave, the vibe was all in the other direction. Quiet, contained people who meditated and prayed, hardly a brand among any of them in three years’ patronage. Buttoned in front the NY apparel turned out, in the baseball cut that was likely limited edition. Tempted to ask the lad himself, who was well into his fifties; perhaps one of the Viet kitchen hands might be more politik.

Subversive Farming - publish by Wild Roof Journal May20

Moringa—the last number of months Nance had been drinking a medicinal tea made from the leaves, she thought. There had been a lot of recent hype about it seemingly. (Next morning one of the lads at Al-Azhar suggested a narcotic effect was received from moringa.) The example here stood about three metres tall. Sour sop was sighted for the first time here, another small tree; in the sorbet form it made one of Nance’s favourite desserts, with sugar or a dash of honey added to combat the tartness. The No Monkey Tree might have been one of the jests posted on signs throughout the farm, if it had not been for a number of repetitions of the same at the base of these impressive trees. Monkeys could not climb those trunks perhaps because of the sharp nodules over the surface, which was something like the outer casing of the durian, a tree that oddly seemed not to be represented in this farm. It had taken eight years in the region for the first sighting of the ginger plant, the bulging root exposed at the base of some of the potted stalks in the examples here. Oodles of bananas were represented in numerous varieties on the farm, including some particular black kind, a label indicated. A small pond near the resto held within the fringe of reeds what could only have been loudly croaking frogs, though given the locale one would have been forgiven for thinking amplified recorded nature. (By the outdoor eating area there was a plaster B/W heifer cropping the grass at its feet. In some of the open fields of Singapore awaiting development more playfully cartoonish figures of the same kind featured, the urban planners entirely unconscious of the twisted irony in this concrete jungle they had created.) Ivy Singh who was the spiritual force behind this farm at Kranji was by no means any kind of typical Singaporean, certainly not of the contemporary form—which was most clearly apparent in the sign near the entry that suggested an equivalence between politicians and terrorists. An old sign it seemed this that dated a couple of decades back at least. You Cannot Serve Both GOD & MONEY was another risqué sign here in this turbo-capitalist republic that remunerated its leaders so handsomely. Ivy lived on the farm with a Chinese husband; her surname suggesting a Sikh heritage perhaps partly explained her strongly independent cast of mind. One of Ivy’s Bangladeshi workers testified that the woman was a fine sort, good-hearted at bottom; and that made everything easier for himself and the other workers, the man said. (A tough lady you got the impression, as the farm itself suggested. This was no pretty, decorous affair of flowers & herbs created with photographing tourists in mind.) Our Kashmiri Tufail had some decent Bengali from an extended stay in Calcutta in younger days, where his father had kept a shop for many years. There was no time to take notes, the extensive unfolding of this secret garden in the far west of Singapore did not allow it. A lake full of water lilies they must have been was happened upon all of a sudden behind a stand of greenery. Like the explorers of undiscovered country, the three of us lads came to an immediate halt before the sight. (Attacked by mosquitoes, Nance our driver had retreated to the car.) The flower petals of a banana, at least one of the varieties, revealed itself after a few minutes of standing before a particular tree—just out of reach three metres from the ground, dull crimson colour in three or four long, elongated spears. Three or four days before the flower that had been sheathed might have come into full bloom. The farm and the garden was the work of a lifetime, the product of true passion and calling. Many of the people in Singapore did not know of its existence. Koels and other birds had discovered the quarter. A small pigeon first made its appearance by the lunch table; later it was found along the paths and within the greenery. It was not the same as the common pigeon, Sameer the other Kashmiri had rightly suggested. Sameer had read some Robert Fisk, knew of Chris Hedges and Noam Chomsky. He needed time to absorb what he had seen at the farm, he said over a Winston at the end of the tour. After a long campaign the Singaporean authorities had finally managed to get their Botanical Gardens on the World Heritage list; few of the technocrats would venture out to lunch at the “Poison Ivy” restaurant at Kranji.

                                                                                           

                                                                                                                              Bollywood Veggie Farm, SG

https://wildroofjournal.com/issue-2-gallery-2/#PavleRadonic