Yesterday there was a pasar-malam, a night market, to celebrate Hari Raya, the end of Ramadhan. There was an entire wall of gleaming glass cases displaying beef sausages and siew mai strung on a stick, pyramids of durians mangoes persimmons and hawkers thrusting paper cups of fish maw soup under your nose. It was a crush of color and noise tables piled high with towels lipstick CDs people shouting "Cheaper!" "Discount!" "Try!" Canto-pop wails video game beeps a tangle of fruit fragrances and above everything, ten-dollar surf shorts waving above my head like so many colored flags. You can imagine how my eyes gleamed at this consumerist chaos and I plunged in, savoring the piles of gleaming plastic casings at the mobile phone stand and the rows of nail clippers, like silver fish scales from big to small, at the hardware table.
It reminded me of a pasar-malam I went to just this weekend in Kuala Lumpur. Same event, different countries, and, inevitably, some cheap commentary on life here and there. KL is my family's heartland; while Singapore is a shiny paved skyscrapered metropolis with my parents' work friends and country clubs and Mercedes, KL is a dusty, pot-holed journey to family place, where my relatives live simply and happily, and admire the new Proton.
On my third day there, my cousin took me to a pasar-malam in the suburbs where, unlike in Singapore, the stalls just spring up like mushrooms in a certain parking lot every weekend, without any heed of licenses or parking regulations. The road was soaked with drippings and trodden vegetables from the food stalls. People were shoving and you had to clasp your bag to your chest in fear of pickpockets. Beggars with twisted limbs crawled on the asphalt and the crowd flowed around them. Like a stream parting over rocks. The stands stood out from the night only from light bulbs strung up on posts and shouting voices, compared to the neatly erected tents and centralized lighting in my Singapore pasar-malam. There, traffic circulated neatly amongst the stands; the floor was tiled and unblemished of litter.
Yet, clutching my orange plastic bags of fruit and sewing notions, I was disappointed by the orderliness of my own neighborhood market. The pasar-malam in KL and secret night markets in Hong Kong I'd grown up with were meant to be riots. I went to be swallowed by the crowd to grab like the others at the pirated CDs stroke cotton nightshirts elbow people in my way and, most of all, to breathe open night air mixed with the juices of roasting meat and coconut milk. Unable to match the happy chaos in my mind with the docility of this place, I climbed on the bus and, sadly, rode home.
