“My husband is there, in Phuket,” the lady tells me through clenched teeth. “He’ll be at the airport. If they put me in an ambulance, can you tell him?”
I hesitate, not willing to suddenly take on all this responsibility for a woman who just happened to be sitting next to me on a flight when I have more important things on my mind than an impending baby. I have a corpse to fight over.
“I’m sure the airline people will call your husband if they put you in an ambulance,” I say, but Pop cuts in. “I will inform him!” he announces eagerly. He’s now leaning over Zara, physically trying to block her out of the conversation. “There are not many in Thailand who can speak English,” he says again, his tone valiantly maintaining a blend of pride in himself and sorrow in his people.
“He doesn’t speak very good English,” the lady says. “He’s Russian.”
Pop physically deflates. He’s still leaning towards me but seems to be debating if he should sit back down. “Thai?” he tries.
I wonder if I should ask now how she had expected me to speak to him if he didn’t speak English, but I don’t think I should add to her current distress. “I’ll handle it,” I say, and my voice sounds tentative, but she squeezes my hand gently.
“Thanks,” she says.
She seems to have calmed down a little, although I can tell from her face that that doesn’t mean her contractions have stopped.
“Is there anything I can do to help you feel better?” I say, just to say something after a few minutes of sitting there in silence, Zara alternating between the in-flight games and staring at me to see if it was okay to ask something.
“Could you just talk? Keep talking,” she says. “How much longer is this flight?”
I glance at my watch and decide against telling her it’s just been ten minutes since she asked the stewardess. “Oh, I think we’re close,” I say, and try to gloss over my own obvious lie. “Well, this is my daughter Zara, she’s six. Zara, say hi.” I pause to let Zara give a little wave. I try to will her to talk now. This would be a great time to start a little childish chatter and excuse your Daddy from having to carry on a conversation.
But Zara remains mum, obviously under the impression that something horrendous is happening next to Daddy. “It’s okay, Zara, this lady is okay. She’s having a baby soon, isn’t that cool?” I try to pry some interest out of her, and it seems to work.
“Is it a boy or a girl?” my daughter asks.
“It’s a boy,” the lady says. “My second boy. My first is with his dad in Phuket. I was just in Singapore for a bit visiting my family. I really didn’t think he would be coming this early.”
“How early is he?” Zara asks, evidently warming up to the subject. “And what is your name? And what is his name?”
The lady sort of smiles through her mask of discomfort. “My name is Anita. And I haven’t thought of a name for him yet. Do you have any ideas? Do you have a brother?”
“I don’t have a brother but I want one,” says Zara thoughtfully and I suddenly feel like an inanimate telephone line linking them both by holding their hands, accidentally privy to thoughts they would only tell one another. “If I had a brother, his name would be Zachary. Or maybe my parents would name him Prakash.”
I give a start, and they both stare at me, their telephone connection suddenly come to life. “That’s not…she’s just…that’s my…” I say, apparently only able to speak in fragments now, and to my complete horror I feel tears come to my eyes. I let go of both their hands, breaking their connection, and get out of my seat, saying something vaguely apologetic, knowing they both have already seen my tears. I walk very quickly to the very back of the plane and stop just before the galley.
I just stand there for a while to compose myself, feeling like my tears don’t match my internal state, which is more ache than upset. I don’t know if Anita and Zara are still talking, if they are just holding each other’s hands now, a direct connection. Maybe Zara has told Anita everything. Maybe Anita doesn’t want to hear anything about a dead man because she’s superstitious. Maybe Zara has convinced Anita to name her son Prakash, a random Indian name for a Chinese-Russian baby, and I close my eyes and allow myself to think about it all for a few seconds: Anita’s baby, my arm in a sling, Prakash’s body in Phuket, and how much I wish we could all start over.
REVELATION TO AMALA ROSE
WHEN AMALA ROSE burst into her house after running all the way from school to escape the noise that was echoing through the streets and found the rooms empty and her family missing, she thought the only thing she could possibly think: the rapture had happened.
She felt foolish for not knowing earlier. She had heard the brassy wail from the moment she had waved goodbye to Kavita after exiting the school gate and watched as her friend ran into her own house, where her mother was calling to her. The sound was persistent, alternating in amplitude—growing loud and then soft, then loud again—and Amala Rose had cupped her hands over her ears and run the whole 500 metres home, her backpack bouncing uncomfortably on her shoulders. There, she found the kitchen cupboards open, some of her mother’s blouses strewn haphazardly on the living room floor, and her brother’s toothbrush—still with toothpaste on it—on the dining table. Evidently God could not wait for them to complete household chores or take care of matters of basic oral hygiene.
This, of course, begged the most nagging question: why had they been taken up, and not her? As far as she could tell, her parents and brother were not that much more pious than she—they all went to St Thomas Orthodox Church every Sunday since they had moved to Singapore, recited the same liturgy, repented heavily and closed their eyes reverently at all the right places. She had been told repeatedly that she was saved, and did not need to worry about earning it, so why now this discrepancy? She started running through all the bad things she had done that her family might not have replicated, or ways they might have redeemed themselves that she had not. Was it about how often they read their Bibles? She ran to her father’s bedside drawer and yanked it open, intending to make a last-ditch effort. His gold-leaf Bible, that the family read from after dinner every night, was gone. It would seem even the Good Book had been beamed up to Heaven, while Amala Rose had been left behind.
She despaired. The metallic wailing—which she now recognised as the trumpets of the angels in the Book of Revelation—went on outside, and she could hear people running, crying and shouting for one another frantically. She wanted to go out and tell them it was no use: the chosen had already been taken.
How different it felt from just a year ago, when Appa had seen an advertisement for a job with the British Forces in Singapore in the newspaper one night and run out immediately in the dark to apply for it. He had returned with sweets and smiles, kissed them all on their foreheads and told Amala Rose that they were the chosen, the ones going to begin life anew in a small country, another British colony, where Appa would get a job and she would go to a better school. How difficult it had been to say goodbye to her friends, to stand by her mother as they assured the members of the Kokkamangalam congregation that they would locate and settle into the Singapore congregation at once, to choose just five out of her twenty special books so as to not weigh down their new hard suitcases. Now, she felt, it was all for naught. Would she have been taken up if they had remained in India? Had she been tainted somehow, by the long ship ride here, the days of school, the mixing with children of other races and religions? She thought guiltily of how she had pocketed Tian’s pink eraser when she wasn’t looking, of how she had sworn to Miss Wong that she had submitted that Maths worksheet and the teacher must have lost it, of how she had agreed with Kavita when she had said, “Your church is just like our temple, right?” No, Kavita, our church is not like your temple at all, she retroactively wanted to say, to set it right, to pronounce the words that might get her into eternity yet. Of course Kavita and her mother were still around—they were unbelievers, after all. They were probably still in their house
near the school, stuffing their ears with tissue and wondering what on earth the sound was for.
She wondered what she should do now—should she resign herself to her fate and get comfortable, or still make some valiant attempt to get into heaven? If she were back in Kokkamangalam, she would have run through the village yelling to see if anyone else were still there, and seek comfort with them, or run to the church so she was at least the most religious of the abandoned heathens. But she was still shy around her new neighbours here, many of whom spoke only Malay or Hokkien, and she wasn’t positive she could find her way to the local St Thomas on foot. She fleetingly considered running to the British government building where her father clerked—but then remembered he would probably have been taken up first among the faithful: there was no one quite as upright as her Appa.
She truly missed home for the first time since their ship had docked at Keppel Harbour and she had run from the boat onto the shores of her new homeland, unsure if she was confusing her relief at being out in the open with a sudden rush of love towards the new country. Her father, who had gone ahead of them, met them at the harbour to take them to their new home, a unit on the first floor of a shophouse next to a Chinese traditional medicine store that gave the street the permanent tang of ginseng. He had been so proud of it that Amala Rose and her brother had become caught up in his excitement, too, and barely thought about how much smaller it was than their house in India, how far it was from anyone they knew, how herby the air constantly smelled.
Of course, she’d heard her mother muttering under her breath every once in a while that they should have never left India—usually when customers for her tailoring business dried up—but Amala Rose only felt homesickness acutely now that the world was about to end and it appeared that she would shortly be facing judgement for sins unknown but evidently severe.
She now considered the possibility of running outside to join the other frenzied heathens, even if they did not speak the same tongue—they were alike in a more important way, after all—or even heading to Kavita’s house to commiserate. But that would be resigning herself to her fate once and for all, so Amala Rose dropped to her knees in the middle of her small bedroom to make a final petition to God. She screwed her eyes tightly shut and tried to remember all the bits of the Bible she could, knowing that every wrong word could cost her eternity. She prayed fervently, if incoherently, and had just decided upon attempting the Nicene Creed in its entirety when a voice screamed at her to GET UP GET UP WHAT ARE YOU DOING?
She bolted upright, genuinely amazed that the Lord was still on speaking terms with her, when her brother grabbed her arm and began pulling her out the door, still screaming at her in apparent vexation.
She allowed herself to be pulled out of the house, comprehending nothing of what her very agitated brother was saying, but staring at him in wonder. She began running when he did, still not letting go of her arm, and the realisation dawned on her that the good Lord had not abandoned her after all, but sent back His emissary for her rescue.
She turned towards her red-faced, sweaty brother and wrapped her arms around him in sheer gratitude, causing him to trip. He looked like he was about to cry at the prospect of meeting their Lord Jesus when he yelled over all the noise JAPANESE COMING and she screamed back HALLELUJAH! Her brother groaned and picked her up before starting to run again and Amala Rose wept in relief and anticipation of eternity as the trumpets droned on and the distant whirr of aircraft glided into the symphony.
THE EMPLOYYE'S GUIDE TO TRANSPORTING CUSTOMERS TO MEXICO
ON NAPKINS:
When serving a dish to a customer, really look at the dish, examine its ingredients and ask yourself: is this a one-napkin sort of dish? Or might it be a messier dining experience? Only after full reflection on this point should you select the number of napkins you will present the customer, along with the cutlery. Most customers may not even notice, but every once in a while you will have a customer who will think to himself, “Wow, how nice of the waiter to be so thoughtful as to bring me nine napkins for these grilled prawns, for which I will obviously have to use my hands.” Trust me, they will notice when you don’t bring them enough napkins, they will “tsk” noisily and wonder aloud why in the world they were given only one napkin for this messy burrito. But don’t overcompensate either, and just bring every customer a lot of napkins to avoid thinking about each individual dish. You will have customers angrily thinking just how messy of an eater you must presume they are to need this stack of napkins for a simple basket of chips. But getting the number of napkins just right—this is an art that will distinguish you as a waiter, and us as a staff, and that will be part of the X factor that will give us an edge over our competitors, even in the dog-eat-dog world of Singapore’s food and beverage scene.
Ria had harboured reservations about Guacamolay! from the day she was hired. She’d seen a job ad online with a creative font, looking for “spicy individuals” who were “interested in Latino culture” for a job at a newly opened “on the cutting edge of hip” Mexican restaurant in Holland Village. She took a screen shot of the ad and strolled to the interview in between dropping her résumé off at a few other places that day, planning to cite her teenage crush on Ricky Martin as evidence of her interest in Latino culture. She ended up walking into the restaurant and walking out with a job in five minutes. She hadn’t actually done anything, or even handed in her résumé. The manager happened to be at the bar counter when she had walked in. He had taken just one look at her and screamed, “¡Bienvenida!” before immediately asking, “Indian? Mixed? What are you?”
She was taken aback, but he hadn’t seemed rude, just sort of earnest and enthusiastic, so she replied, “Indian. And mixed.” Which seemed to be a good enough answer for him, because she could start the next day as part of a weeklong try-out period.
When she went in the next day, she found a dozen other faces like hers staring back at her: medium-tanned skin, large eyes, wavy hair, racially ambiguous. She felt slightly foolish stepping into the room, as all the newly hired staff stared at each other, recognising that it couldn’t be a coincidence. The manager, a Chinese guy whose name turned out to be Dave, arrived shortly after Ria, and was the only person in the room whose ethnicity was clear. He hadn’t shied away from the matter, but started the first of his many pep talks with: “As you can see, we are going for a uniform look for our staff, for the added layer of authenticity.”
If Ria felt uncomfortable with getting a job based on her looks, it lasted no longer than the 15-minute bus ride home. She needed one, and maybe more than one, if she was going to afford to start veterinary school in Australia in six months. She went home and told her dad about Guacamolay!, adding tentatively that she seemed to have been selected for looking passably Mexican, but he barely lifted his eyes from his papers and grunted, “Your mother and I are proud.” Which is what he still said to most things she told him about her life these days, never mind that her mother had been living with her new boyfriend in her native Finland for more than a year now.
On the second day of the job, Dave gathered the staff at the end of the day for a pep talk, which included a PowerPoint presentation with a vision statement, motivational quotes and sales numbers from their mere two days of work. The staff bore with it and smiled indulgently through IF NO ONE IS LAUGHING AT YOUR DREAM, YOU AREN’T DREAMING BIG ENOUGH! but they soon found out that the pep talks were a regular fixture of Dave’s restaurant. They continued daily throughout the first week, and the entire staff had to stay back for an hour after the restaurant closed—an hour they were not paid for, but Dave insisted on.
Dave looked to be in his mid-twenties, with an unplaceable accent to his English that indicated he’d gone overseas and come back with lots of ideas about how to make a restaurant in Singapore just like some restaurant he had seen in the other place. In the middle of the second week, he announced that his managerial pep talks would now become a weekly affair instead of a daily one. The staff ’s sigh
s of relief were cut short when Dave pulled out a large cardboard box and dramatically opened it to produce A4-sized booklets bound by blue plastic rings all the way down the length of their spines. Dave distributed one to each of them, explaining that these were employee handbooks he had personally authored, and which he expected every one of them to memorise. Ria idly flipped through it while waiting to be dismissed and came across the section entitled ON NAPKINS, which told her she was not long for this place.
Dave ended the meeting—their shortest ever—with another one of his motivational quotes, splashed across the screen of the projector: WHEN WE ALL WORK TOGETHER, WE ALL WIN TOGETHER! He told them that there was nothing hard work couldn’t accomplish, and that Guacamolay! was a concept just primed for success.
On the restaurant’s name:
Some people may ask you why our restaurant is called Guacamolay! They may be referring either to the spelling or the fact that it has an exclamation mark attached to it. If they are asking about the spelling, please explain that the owner of the restaurant (myself) was concerned that many Singaporeans may be confused by the word “guacamole” and pronounce it accordingly as “guaca-mol”. In order to avoid such embarrassment, I have given the restaurant an easy-to-pronounce name that sounds just like the delicious avocado-based food that we serve with every meal in the restaurant. If they are inquiring about the exclamation mark, please tell them (enthusiastically!) that it is there to convey how excited we are about our food, and how excited they soon will be, too, to have tried it!
On the exclamation mark:
Never leave out the exclamation mark in the restaurant’s name, both in your written communications and when you say it out loud. If you say it without the exclamation mark (with a lilt at the end of the word, a smile and some excitement), it becomes just the delicious avocado-based food that we serve with every meal in the restaurant. Please remember that we need to keep up the image of our brand.
Regrettable Things That Happened Yesterday Page 7