“Ready?”
Now this is the only place where we can experience how it used to be. I just want to wander around and soak it all in. Take that heap of vibrant green mangoes. The mangoes that arrive on my doorstep are always slightly too ripe, their flesh a garish yellow and almost mushy. Nothing like these. And see, those baskets of tubers, still rough and chalky with dirt, not yet washed and peeled and sliced. And the slim green stalks and their spray of green leaves, unrestrained by vacuum plastic packaging. Even the fish here, with their flat round eyes, their fine scales glittering against the white mounds of crushed ice, have their own morbid kind of charm. Everything is fresh, raw, bursting with a long-lost vitality. As I walk, I realise that there’s an unfamiliar weight in my pocket. Oh — a wallet. They must have included it as part of the experience. I riffle through the different-coloured faces of the first king, staring out at me solemnly. Right. This is what physical currency had looked like. I play-act at grocery shopping, paying with paper notes, getting back my change in the form of heavy, clinking coins. It feels strange, at first, to be actually talking to people. To confirm the freshness of the product, to ask for the price, to smile and say thank you. Then, maybe to chat about other things. Did we really use to interact like this, so intimately, as if every stranger was an old friend? So this was how we used to know our neighbours, our communities. This was how we learned about each other. My time must be running out. I shake hands with everyone who passes, the heavy shopping bags of a bygone era swinging
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