Noodles

I took my place in the coffeeshop, one near to my home. Across the table, a middleaged woman in a business suit chatted incessantly with her companion, a thin balding man, gesturing furiously with her elegantly manicured hands.

"I'm not very hungry, I ordered a bowl of fishball noodles," the woman quipped.

"Is it good?" her partner queried.

"Don't know leh, never try before," came the reply.

The conversation shifted back to stocks and shares, and almost instantaeneously, I became bored, suddenly impatient that my food was taking so long. I folded my ten dollar bill into half 5 times before it became physically impossible to shrink it any further with my bare hands. My stomach made a loud uncouth noise, momentarily distracting my neighbours. I pretended not to notice them looking.

Then he came, the son of the fishball noodles hawker. It was a new tennant that took over the stall, replacing the old bachelor who had passed away recently. The adolescent was about 18 years of age, a big sized fellow who dwarfed both his parents. His eyes were large, a little droopy at the corner, and the smile on his face seemed a permanent fixture. As he carefully laid the metal tray onto the table, slowly unloading the bowl, chopsticks and saucer of sliced red chili before the woman, his actions were delayed and unnatural, like he needed considerable effort to do so.

"Two dollars," he articulated his words with great deliberation, and smiled foolishly at the woman, unaware that she was more than a little uncomfortable of his presence. She slid a neat stack of coins across to the boy's side, and he scoped them up and counted his treasure as he walked back to the stall.

The woman muttered to her friend in a barely audible tone, almost wincing pain as she stirred the noodles. She took 1 mouthful of the blackish looking strands and had her suspicions confirmed. The noodles were indeed awful and her facial expression as she ate screamed this undeniable fact.

My lunch finally arrived, but I ate without tasting. I was overwhelmed by sympathy for the boy, watching him, as he stared with childlike wonder at the televsion screen, preoccupied in his own world. He was almost an adult, only it was a boy of seven who peered out from those eyes.

I felt a pressing guilt. It made me think about the things I've been taking for granted, my soul misguided by material wants instead of a sense purpose. I suddenly felt suffocated, sick of myself, and desperate for direction.

I walked over to the boy, tapped gently on his shoulder. He turned, startled.
"One packet, dry, with chili," I tried to put forward slowly. He nodded and strode towards his perspiring mother.

That night I warmed the noodles for supper. They were the worse noodles I've ever eaten in all my fifteen years. But I loved it for all the intangible ingredients.



Afternote:
This brief encounter is entirely true and I wrote it in 1997. The stall closed soon after. A couple of years later I saw the boy again working at a coffeeshop at Pasir Panjang clearing tables.
He was as happy as always.