NaBloPoMo: one post every day throughout November

There’s a pair of big baskets at the Peranakan Museum. These are the ‘bakul siah’, ‘auspicious baskets’ used during the mammoth 12-day wedding ceremony to transport gifts between houses. They are huge things with many units, cylindrical, shiny with lacquer and grasped at the top by a big single handle. For some reason I really like them.

So this morning a few of us from the group went on a tour of the Baba House, a beautiful Peranakan home in town. There in the master bedroom were the baskets, and not just one pair but three or four (she was a lucky lady, this bride). After the tour a fellow student told us she’d seen an antique shop around the corner; even better, it was actually open (things open late in Sing). Three of us went along.

Like most antique shops it was stuffed to the rafters with things: shoes, a phone, Cola sign under an altar with neon candles. Just like my parents’ flat, actually, and as always in junk shops I felt immediately at home. Right at the back, half covered in a blanket, I spotted a dusty little box in three parts with a handle over the top. Red and gold (rather than the usual black and gold) and a great deal smaller, but unmistakeable. I fished out a tissue, started to wipe off the dust on the lid and the colours shone through. Magical.

I asked the owner how old? Seventy years. I asked him how much? In the back of the shop I asked my friend what she’d pay and, muttering out of the sides of our mouths, we came to the same agreement. I opened my wallet and started the bidding.

Now it’s sitting over by our bookshelves, has had a drop of water and a wipe-down, and looks completely at home. I have no idea how genuine, how old, how much of a good or bad deal the thing was or, in fact, whether I should have brought it home at all, but then I look over at it and know that really, I just don’t care.