My cousin walks in, tall and tan, straight from work with a new gold band on her ring finger. The youngest uncle, face puffed with pride, shows off his latest and greatest culinary achievements. The deaf granduncle’s absence bothers no-one except my oldest aunt, who, in spite of his violent threats and enroaching senile dementia still remembers how, before he was carted to the nursing home, he carted her and her sister and brothers to school on his ice-cream trishaw.
In the morning the kitchen is filled with the rat-a-tat-tat sounds of ah ma’s cleaver punching meat, the sharp sounds slicing air. In the corner ah gong reads the paper with one leg slung over the other, the foot in the air nodding in accompaniment to grandmother’s cleaver, but in time to its own drum. I feel like I’m sitting on the set of a Ghibli movie, and imagine how I would direct the scene, Miyazaki-style: first a close-up of my half-eaten bun (freshly procured from Tiong Bahru Pau), steam rising from the top, a view of the swift cleaver – wings and feet off! Head, sliced in two! Belly, seppuku-ed! Hisahi, music please. Cut to the swaying rhythm of ah gong’s feet.
Swimming, blue - 