Nimita's Place Page 4

“But—” Bala looks at her, then nods. “Yes, we’ll think about it. So many options, you know.”

  The agent opens his mouth but Letchemi pulls Bala away. “We’ll let you know,” she says. “Nice to meet you, Nimita.”

  “Bye.” I smile and wave as they walk out. The agent looks at me the way I look at Thai mangoes—hopeful but not expecting much.

  I’m hopeful too. I’m hoping to get a good price on this place. Raymond’s contract will be over next year, he will move back to be with Chia Ying and they will want to be alone in their home. I’ll need a new place to stay. If I’m still in Singapore.

  It hurts my wrist to think about this. “Six-thirty K,” I say, starting low.

  His hands come up. “Cannot, cannot. My seller don’t sell at that price.”

  I bring up the PropertyGuru app on my phone and show him the monthly price trend. “See? Good price what.”

  “Cannot, lah! You give me better price.”

  “Come on”—what is the agent’s name again?—“Alan. Come on, Alan. I give you a good price. Market rate.”

  He looks at his phone. “Cannot lah.”

  “Can, can.” I sigh loudly. “Okay, for your sake, I’ll offer six-forty K.”

  Alan looks up from his phone. “Cannot.” His voice is firm now. He holds out the screen to show me. “See your colleague ready to top your offer.”

  Bala and Letchemi have sent him a message: “She sure won’t offer high. Foreigner got extra tax. You tell me offer maybe I can top up.”

  Does Bala know about my contract expiring?

  I do pranayama breathing but it doesn’t help.

  “You need water?” the agent asks.

  I avoid his eyes and walk out quickly.

  4.

  “You know what you want?” asks the teenager wearing a green-and-white checked apron. She is standing behind a huge glass case lined with shelves of sliced cakes, tarts, puffs, cream rolls and three kinds of multicoloured buns.

  “Vega-pure!” says the label on her apron. Vega-pure is short for pure vegan, which is even more strictly vegetarian than most Indian vegetarians. Vegans don’t even drink milk.

  “Kopi,” says Chia Ying in what is Chinese—or is it Malay?—for coffee. “Kopi lagi best. It’s bunbelievable.”

  “Bunbelievable?” Is she serious? “That’s sillier than ‘yum-mango’ or ‘banana-licious’.”

  “Nimita Sachdev, I am so serious I will treat you.” She unzips her wallet.

  “No, no.” I unzip mine. This is zabardasti, the emotional blackmail I thought only parents and buas were capable of: making you do something by threatening to do it themselves.

  Two golden one-dollar coins and a shining fifty-cent coin come out. That is almost how much I was planning to spend on lunch later.

  Irving hands the teenager a red-and-peach ten-dollar note. “Three kopi buns,” he says.

  I try to give him the coins. “Claimable expense,” he says and takes the bun tray.

  While he begins photographing the buns with his fancy smartphone, Chia Ying pokes me in the shoulder. “Don’t worry. She will love it.”

  I need the help of our lab manager Santha to design a research project to wow Dr Alagasamy. Santha is the second-most important person in the lab after Dr Alagasamy, even though, like me, she does not have a PhD. She doesn’t even have a master’s degree, only a life sciences diploma from the ITE polytechnic. Santha orders lab equipment and enzymes for every researcher. She does the prep work that keeps our lab running and writes all the applications for grants. So she knows just what proposals will win funding and the boss’ heart.

  The quickest way to sweeten up Santha is to literally offer her sweets. She is a big foodie, but a pure vegetarian one. In the past, I have given her homemade pickles from India or mithai from Karachi Sweet Shop.

  Last night, Chia Ying said she knows of a vegan bakery with the best buns she has ever tasted. So good they are “bunbelievable”. “Santha will eat one and design a project for you in gratitude,” she said.

  Hearing this, Irving decided to make the store his project of the day. It is great because he’s paying for everything, but also quite terrible, because he spends more time filming than eating.

  “Can we eat now?” Chia Ying asks him.

  Irving nods and sits on one of the high-legged stools around the round table. Chia Ying and he each take a bun in hand, then look at me.

  “Lai, lai,” Chia Ying says in Chinese—Mandarin? “Come, come, Nimmy. What’s the problem?”

  Once upon a time I had no problem with buns. I liked them so much that Dadi ordered one dozen fresh buns every week from Parsi Dairy.

  Then I went to a university where the hostel food was watery dal and rice, and the cook threw chillies into everything. The only thing worth eating were the bun products, spelled “bum”. Bum-vada, which is fried potato patty in a bun. Bum and jam, bum and cream, plain bum. I ate buns till I could no longer look at the Parsi Dairy buns at home.

  Chia Ying is still looking at me. Even Irving hasn’t bitten into his bun.

  So I take a bite.

  Then another.

  And one more.

  Then I lick my fingers.

  Chia Ying smiles. “Yes?”

  I put my hands together in the namaste mudra, which mostly means “hello” but can also mean “sorry”.

  “Sorry. You were right.”

  “Say it,” Chia Ying orders.

  I laugh. “Bunbelievable.”

  These buns are nothing like the thick, bread-like hot cross buns Dadi ordered from the Parsi Dairy. These buns are soft brown domes that melt into an airy puff of fresh coffee and sugar in your mouth.

  I lick my teeth and run my tongue around the inside of my cheeks. The only problem is that you can have five of these Singapore buns and still be hungry. One Parsi Dairy bun with real cream made from buffalo milk and you won’t even want water, your stomach would be that full.

  “There’s a lunch set,” Irving says. I look at the blackboard, which reads:

  House sandwich/wrap + drink = $12.50/$14

  Today’s special! Spring garden salad with avocado

  The sun beats into the air-conditioned café. The glass windows are dusty because of the construction around us, more tall buildings squeezing into an area already spiked with towers.

  For lunch, we were going to go to Hong Lim Food Centre where I like the curry-chicken noodles. Only $3.50 for a bowl of noodles topped with chicken curry that tastes almost like a Punjabi made it. One thing I love about Singapore is the number of small stalls selling cheap and good food, just like the handcarts on every second road in Mumbai. Like in Mumbai, there is Chinese food, Indian food and some fun combinations of both.

  Unlike Mumbai, every stallholder has to display a cleanliness rating from A to C so you know the food is safe to eat.

  The best and cheapest food courts in Singapore are outdoors, just like in Mumbai. The Hong Lim Food Centre noodles are delicious but so is the flow of air-con on the back of my neck.

  I do the maths. The buns are $2.50 each—the price of a set meal with two soft-boiled eggs, butter toast and coffee at the hospital canteen. I need to buy at least six for Santha. On my weekly budget, I can’t afford a $12.50 lunch.

  I swallow my saliva and pat my stomach. “Actually, guys, I’m feeling full—”

  Chia Ying says: “Irving, you’re not in Singapore to blog about Western food, right? Come, we go to Hong Lim Food Centre. You will love the curry-chicken noodle.”

  “We have something like that in Hong Kong. Have you eaten at Chutney Mary?”

  “Okay. Then you try the Hokkien mee or the char kway teow. All the stallholders have been there for at least twenty years, you know. Your blog ratings for Singapore will soar.”

  On our way to the food centre, Irving points at something behind us. “What’s that?”

  I shift the box of buns from my right hand to the left. No plastic. Save the environment and save fifty cents by not tak
ing a bag.

  Irving takes the box from me.

  “I can—”

  “What’s that building?” he asks again.

  “That’s Pinnacle@Duxton. Tallest HDB building in Singapore.” The HDB is a complex of several tall buildings, fifty storeys high, connected by bridges. From SGH, they look like silicon chips joined to form a giant computer, or a spaceship in a sci-fi movie.

  “HDB?”

  “Housing Development Board. That’s a block of flats built by the Singapore government, only for Singapore citizens.”

  Pinnacle@Duxton is more up-market than most of the condos I can barely afford to buy. On the resale market, the flats cost one million each. The complex is the pinnacle of living for Singaporeans and completely out of reach for a non-Singaporean like me. I have always wondered what the flats look like from the inside.

  “State housing doesn’t look like that in Hong Kong,” Irving says.

  “It doesn’t look like that in India either.” The Mumbai government built chawls in the 1960s for workers in mills that were run by people like Dada, my grandfather. In chawls, families have one room to themselves but share a common toilet and sometimes even a kitchen. For an HDB flat to cost as much as a condo is like a one-room chawl in Mumbai costing as much as a studio apartment on the super up-market Nepean Sea Road.

  I walk faster to catch up with Chia Ying, who has disappeared. There is so much construction on both sides of the road, so many tall wood-and-metal barriers, that it is hard to see someone even ten metres ahead of you.

  Chia Ying reappears, pointing in the other direction. “Sorry, we go this way. This place keeps changing.”

  We turn but the towers of Pinnacle@Duxton remain in view, above the construction safety walls.

  At Hong Lim Food Centre, I buy my curry-chicken noodles. I reserve a table near the stall while Chia Ying takes Irving around. She comes back with a plate.

  “He’s going for bak chor mee maybe. He says, start first.”

  I pick up my fork. “Chia Ying, when I went to order, the uncle asked me: ‘Makan?’ but when you went, he said something else. What did he say?”

  She takes the skin off her chicken. “‘Makan’ means ‘eat’ in Malay. He was asking you to order.”

  “What did he ask you?”

  “Same thing in dialect.”

  “Malay dialect?”

  “Chinese dialect.”

  “Why did he talk to me in Malay?”

  “A lot of older Chinese people speak Malay. Singapore was once going to be part of Malaysia, you know.”

  Irving comes to the table at the same time the drinks stall helper does. I order in Singapore English—Singlish—which is the only language the helpers understand. I ask for “teh-o-kosong peng”, which is tea, no milk, no sugar, with ice.

  Chia Ying orders calamansi, which is like Indian nimbu paani and made from the same small, green limes. Only, the juice is a radioactive green like the marker I use to check that my genetically engineered cells are expressing the right DNA.

  Irving asks for mineral water. “You’ll die in this heat,” Chia Ying tells him.

  He chases after the helper to change his order to ice barley. I quickly ask Chia Ying: “Teh-o-kosong peng, is that Malay?”

  “Hokkien, I think. Some dialect. Why all these questions?”

  “No reason.”

  Irving sits down with a plate of red noodles. “Does this look authentic?”

  “Compared to what?”

  His lips turn up. “I was assured these were Indian noodles. Mee goreng.”

  Haan, that misunderstanding. “No, there are no noodles in India except for seviyaan, which is a sweet dish.” Mee goreng is something Indians and Chinese people cooked up for Singapore. Maybe some Malay people helped.

  “How about fish-head curry?”

  “In Mumbai, we make curry from the actual fish. We chop off the head. Who wants to eat the skull and eyeballs?”

  My bag falls off my lap. I pick it up and it vibrates. My phone is ringing.

  “Excuse me.” It is rude to talk at the table, also the chatter at the curry noodle stall is too loud. I step away.

  Private number. Romy-Bhaiya, at this hour?

  “Hello?” I am holding the phone awkwardly and my wrist hurts. “Hello, Bhaiya?”

  “Hello, is this Nimita Sachdev?”

  The voice has a pukka Indian accent. Romy-Bhaiya has a weird American accent. I change hands and my wrist stops hurting.

  “Yes, hello?”

  “Hi. I am Gautam Bhatia. We met that time in Delhi.”

  “Gautam Bhatia.”

  “Yes. We met at your cousin’s wedding?”

  I say nothing.

  “You don’t remember? Anyway, your bua said I should call you when I am in Singapore.”

  “Hello.” I sit down on an empty stool. The fans on my back dry the sweat from my skin.

  “How are you?”

  “I am fine. How are you?” This is a Delhi person. Make some small talk. “When did you come to Singapore?”

  “Just one week ago. I’m here for some business meetings and staying with a friend at this place, Pinnacle@Duxton. Is that somewhere you know?”

  “Yes, it’s a well-known place.”

  “Oh, good, good.”

  He is silent and so am I.

  “I am here for some business,” he says again.

  “Oh, so you are very busy.”

  “No, no. What I mean is I am free in the evenings. When are you free?”

  “Oh, in the lab we don’t keep office hours. We keep all odd hours.”

  “You must get some free time.”

  My ears are sweating. I can feel the phone surface become moist and slippery.

  “Hello?”

  “Hello, yes.” I must think. “Sorry, I am outside, it is very noisy.”

  “Oh, okay. I was just wondering if you are free one of these days. To catch up.”

  Itty-Bua’s face flashes in front of me.

  I can’t refuse to meet him right out. So I say we will meet some time. Keep it vague.

  Chia Ying and Irving look up from their noodles. Chia Ying is halfway through hers. Irving hasn’t started his.

  “Who was that?”

  I sit down. “Gautam Bhatia.”

  Chia Ying drops her chopsticks in her bowl. “No! What did you say?”

  “I said I was busy.”

  “Woman, you did not say that.”

  Irving picks up his fork and starts eating.

  Chia Ying shakes my shoulder. “This man has been single ever since he met you once at a wedding. Isn’t it like a Bollywood movie? Where is your heart?”

  “Stop it, Chia Ying, I’ll get curry on my shirt.” I pick up some noodles with my fork.

  “You are so unromantic,” she says. “Don’t you think she’s unromantic?”

  Irving shrugs.

  He doesn’t join in the teasing, so Chia Ying stops moaning about Bollywood.

  I feel a bit better. After half the curry noodles and all the iced tea, I feel a lot better.

  After lunch, Irving heads home to edit his footage. Chia Ying and I walk back to Chinatown MRT, one stop away from our usual Outram Park. We take the long, shady road and cross a big green field where a crowd is standing around listening to some man talk.

  Roadside tamasha is rare in Singapore, though it happens all the time in Mumbai. It is so rare here that Chia Ying and I stop to listen.

  “Our government is courting new citizen votes so it will favour foreigner demands to stay in power. Favour foreigners even if it means taking the rice bowl from our own people!” the man says.

  Many of the men and women around him clap.

  “The government has sold us out! They bring foreigners to replace us! How many Singaporeans here are reporting to foreign supervisors now?”

  Some people cheer.

  “We have to fight back or become second-class citizens in our own country!”

  Chia Ying f
olds her arms.

  It took less than two weeks to get my employment pass after I got my job at SGH. The green card that is valid for two years shows that I am legally employed in Singapore and I can enter and exit Changi Airport through the automated clearance lane, without having to stand in immigration queues like the tourists.

  The noodles burn in my stomach. My employment pass may not be renewed next year.

  I tug at Chia Ying’s sleeve. “Come on.”

  It is hot and muggy and hard to breathe. I can see the MRT entrance now, promising air-con. There are a lot of people outside it, looking at the gathering in the park.

  In fact, one face is very familiar. Santha, the lab manager.

  I call her name. She jumps. “Oh, what are you doing here?”

  I raise the box in my hand. “Shopping for tea time. Thought you will join me.”

  Santha sees Chia Ying. “Oh, hello, you’re her flatmate, right? Also from SGH?”

  “Chia Ying, from radiotherapy.” I introduce them for the thirtieth or fiftieth time. Santha is bad with names. “She showed me these buns. You will love them. They are bunbelievable.”

  Santha laughs so hard her eyes close. “Really? Come, come. Let’s go back and work hard until tea time.”

  At tea time, Santha wants to buy the drinks. I tell her, no, my treat. I open the box of buns. “Please have.”

  “So nice. But I’m getting fat!” Santha says, touching her flat stomach.

  “Rubbish, so thin. Look at me. Have a bun.”

  She purses her lips. I know that look.

  “These buns are pure vegan, you know. Vegetarian! I mean, pure vegetarian, from a bakery in Chinatown. Near the Buddhist temple.”

  “Got tofu?”

  “No tofu. Only ground almond and coffee and flour and cocoa powder and sugar.”

  Santha bites into a bun, crumbs exploding all around her. I’ve got a pack of tissues ready.

  Two bites. Three bites.

  She licks her fingers and then looks at her hand like it belongs to an alien.

  “One more bun?” I push the box towards her.

  “Cannot!” She takes a second bun. Three left.

  I tell her: “Take the rest home for the family.”

  Look at her smile.