Maureen Tai
There are some things that are best purchased at a night market: housedresses (batik), gorengan or deep fried snacks (bananas), and fake sandals (Breakshoes). And there are some things that are best not, alarm clocks being a prime example. I’ve never known any of these rattly, brittle-plastic timekeepers, light and fragile as Chinese New Year love letter crepes, their alarms so piercingly loud as to awaken the dead, to ever perform their sole duty — timekeeping — with any degree of accuracy or reliability, even if you replace the unbranded, slightly oily, AA batteries slotted into their backsides with two, high quality, legitimate Duracells. Nevertheless, my mum has a soft spot for these terrible timepieces and would willingly abandon her exacting standards and high expectations when confronted with an opportunity to add yet another to her collection. “So cheap, and the numbers, so big! Can see without my glasses!” she’d beam as my eardrums perforated from the off-key strains of “It’s A Small World” warbling tinnily from the newly-acquired rectangular block in her hands.
So it came to pass that four night market clocks were on permanent display at my parents’ tiny condominium in Petaling Jaya, Malaysia, each defiantly exercising its right to announce, with its long, spindly hands, whatever time it felt like showing. No amount of manual manipulation could convince them to stay the course for long, so thanks to these blighters, my parents’ already shabby record in punctuality deteriorated further. Until, of course, the pandemic. Mum and dad retreated to the family home in Ipoh to shield and the condominium was hastily abandoned in the fevered wake of MCOs (Movement Control Orders) and SOPs (Standard Operating Procedures) and WTFs.
It was only last week that I finally managed to visit the condominium, the reasons for my own tardiness too complicated to recount here. I’d been uneasy about the visit, imagining the place to be either infested with giant cockroaches or inhabited by squatters. My fears were unfounded. The keys slid easily into their locks and the front door swung open noiselessly. If not for the thin layer of dust coating every exposed surface and the stale, musty odour that hung in the air, the place was exactly as we had left it, four years before. Washed plastic IKEA cups were lined up neatly by the sink. A pair of sports socks dangled crustily from the airer. My mother’s reading glasses rested on a word search book on the dining table. She’d just started to look for “Elton John Hits” in the jumbled blizzard of alphabets.
It was like stepping into a pre-Covid world and I was speechless, swept up by inexplicable emotions that I’m still processing as I write this. My teenaged children whooped like it was Christmas, rooting around in familiar boxes and drawers, pulling out long-forgotten toys and books, laughing at childish pictures they’d drawn with crayons and colouring pencils while lying on the cooling tiled floor in front of the TV. As they entertained themselves with their childhood memories, my eyes landed on the Chinese wall calendar, the page open at Februari 2020. Above it, the large, round wall clock looked smug, its face showing the stopped time of 58 minutes past 4 o’clock. As I wandered from room to room, I noticed that each clock, housed in a separate room, showed a time of just before or just after 5 o’clock. It was as if my mother’s beloved timekeepers had conspired to collectively expire within five minutes of each other, leaving the time capsule they inhabited as silent as a tomb. The never-punctual night market clocks had achieved a near-perfect closing act of synchronicity. Bravo.
When I visit next, I’ll take mum with me. We’ll take off our shoes and place them on the doormat. We’ll pull the curtains apart and throw open the windows. We’ll replace the spent batteries in the clocks with new batteries from freshly cracked-open packets. We’ll watch time begin again, as if it never stopped.
Maureen Tai is an award-winning Malaysian writer living in Hong Kong who has published creative works in literary and online magazines such as Cha, the Asian American Writers’ Workshop, Kyoto Journal, Mekong Review, Voice & Verse Poetry Magazine, Coffee and Conversations, Porch Lit Magazine and The Hooghly Review, as well as in local and international anthologies. Primarily writing for children and teens, she has published short stories for children with Oxford University Press and Marshall Cavendish (Asia). Maureen’s work and book reviews can be found at www.maureentai.com. She counts her time as the Program Director of the Hong Kong International Literary Festival in 2023 as a highlight of her literary career to date. X: @MaureenTai
Featured photo by Maureen Tai
