My afternoons have become a space for connection and curiosity as the hawkers wonder what interest an artist has with them. It is impossible to inhabit a space and not be stirred by the people in it.
M lets me into her kitchen one morning – her dance as she calls it, as she whirls around her small space cutting, chopping, steeping, simmering, preparing up to five dishes at one time in a well-worn routine. She has a vision of a future that keeps her boarding her ‘second home’, the MRT, before sunrise.
In the bustle of changing faces and shifts is also Uncle T. He recounts his mastery of the craft that has become his life and livelihood. He acknowledges his ability to watch, listen, recreate taste and colour and make his own. But he laughs and shrugs when he is done. At his age, he is content in his intrinsic sense of self. He comes with a wealth of experience from delivery to restaurants to hawker stalls. He is a part of a hawker chain. What value do we as consumers, observers, place on his routine, his mastery, his livelihood? Ultimately, he calls himself a ‘calefe' in jest and says the grand opera that is the hawker business will carry on with or without him.
