Guest Author, Tom Bode Sr.

(Tom Jr. is looking good and in fine spirits, the Singaporean life style has not dulled his wit)

‘Little India’ is a section of Singapore, alive with people, vehicles, and goods-for-sale. Every street corner is unique, generations of building and repairing has let its concrete identity organically grow.

We stroll the tourist stalls near the main streets. Small cakes, trinkets, postcards, and plastic Buddhas. Tom Jr. is guiding us past the tourist area into where Indians live, work and shop. We walk in front of, in back of, and through stalls of everyday street food: headed fish wrapped in banana leaves, grilled lamb and beef kabobs, and little plastic bags of who-knows-what. Aisleways are so cramped sometimes you just stop and reverse course. All around is the aroma of the flower threaders mingled with pungent incense and the general commotion of venders rushing for the day.

Under Tom’s persistence, we cross a bland alley and enter a concrete covered area curiously known as a wet market. Why? It will be explained later. The narrow lanes between the venders are even more crowded than the street and crammed with small frame Indians. The eldest of them showing the imperfections of life in their faces. Here a hardened man deftly trims his beef and lamb, there another hacks at unknown flesh. Now whole fish are neatly displayed side by side, cold on the ice. The smell, the noise, the faces all blend. We crisscross ourselves to the tropical vegetables. Sellers with overflowing buckets of cabbages, okra, long beans, their hands hard at work trimming. Here we are, finally near sweet eats, a bowl of dragon fruit, purple with scales of leave, creamy flesh with small black seeds. Bananas of all varieties hang from hooks, here on the floor giant pods of jack fruit. Another cut open to release the smooth yellow finger of meat. Coconuts trimmed to sit upright, and provide its milk. Swirling sounds and color and aromas and commotion. This is Asia! Intense, never ending, always working.

We snack on lime juice, coconut and jack fruit. Why wet market? Because after the trimming and cleaning the owners hose off their goods and the shaded concrete floor is sloppy with water.