The Thieves' Market at Sungei Road yields a unique shopping experience for the island's bargain-hunters. On the bare tarmac under trees too young to offer half a shade, goods that have seen better days are displayed on canvas sheets and makeshift tables by gold-toothed crones and bare-backed uncles. Stroller and shopkeeper scrutinise each other with mutual suspicion, as wares and worthiness are scanned with eye power.
On offer are discarded books, notes of non-legal tender, wind-up cars, faded hand-me-downs, shoes that have outlived their soles, tunes in magnetic tape and objects of utter uselessness in everlasting plastic and eternal porcelain. Inspecting these singular offerings are construction crews, ladies in shaky clogs and a rambling sangha of two. Sometimes there is even a duck, whose arrival draws the dubious attention of foul sorts who attempt to peddle dark bodies on what they assume to be fleecable birdbrains.
Like slaves to serviced apartments, the fair continues with no regard for hours. But in the cool end of the Sabbath, a screen had been erected to distract more fortunate guests from foreign lands, who while away the evening with a show of low fidelity on a leaf litter of grass and garbage. We who thrive in boxed offices have long forgotten the drama and delight of such nights in decades past. And there are few and fewer reminders of life as it was lived and loved in this city where the past no longer has a future.
Comments