Anita Ramgutty Wong, PhD.
The Christmas Market was a highlight of my life as a village child, a major event that I briefly lived through the pain of the poor and the frustration of those who watched from the sidelines. Up until that year, anyway, when I was ten.
My grandmother was a servante, and I spent all my holidays at her place, my parents being so separated that they were unable to figure out who would keep me. Grandma’s patronne held a stall at the Christmas Market, in the football field that separated the villas of the wealthy from the huts and unfinished houses of the poor. She sold strange puff-pastry things she had kept frozen in her chest-freezer and later baked at the market for sale. She needed a hand during the three market days, and Grandma was to serve the visitors.
‘Come sit here and be quiet’, Grandma would say in her voice soft like cotton wool, as she arranged a chair at the back of the stall. I loved being around her and helping out, except this wasn’t home and I wasn’t to be involved in anything. Still, the excitement of Christmas was a real thing, especially this close.
After a couple of dull hours, I asked if I could walk around and see the other stalls and the huge decorated tree in the middle of the market. Soon I was skipping away happily, to the next, and the next stall, staring at the trinkets and baubles, pretty soaps and Christmas-themed cookies. It felt magical and enchanting, with the twinkling lights, the fragrant food, and the live music. I must have counted, maybe, twelve tables before I came upon the most mysterious, enchanting of all: laid out was a spectacle of many shiny objects, metal, crystal or glass. I stopped in my tracks like I had reached a destination, like there was nowhere else possible to be.
‘Hello! What’s your name?’, said a voice, rich and resonant, unlike any other I had heard, almost like a man’s. And I saw her there, standing, smiling, neither white nor brown, neither thin nor fat, not old, yet not young either. But I did notice her enormous earrings, and her hair tied back with a flowery scarf. She looked like she had only just finished setting up, in the act of placing, on top of all this treasure, a folded paper marked “Please do touch”.
‘My name is Keshinee’, I say, timorously.
‘Well, Keshinee, is there anything I could interest you with?’ she says as if speaking to a grown-up. I like that, and it gives me the pluck to tell her I have no money, tell her the story of my presence at the market.
‘Well, I could use some help here, as I must wipe down every item once someone has touched it. Ask your grandmother and come back,’ she says.
Sure enough, I am back in no time, with Grandma in tow, flustered, asking repeatedly, ‘Are you sure she won’t be a nuisance?’
‘No, no, it’s obvious she’s very responsible, and I would love the company. Is the market going well?’ she asks Grandma.
‘You know, these markets, well… people come, they like to walk around, mostly, for the atmosphere. They buy some food maybe. And the stalls, it’s mostly ladies, lovingly making their things by hand. It hurts them to go back home with their unsold creations..’
Oh, my tender-hearted, wonderful Grandma, she works all week at Madame’s and still can manage everything at home, the cooking and the cleaning, and caring for the few goats. She prepares meals from things we have in the garden. No fish. Chicken bones cooked in lentils. I hear the fights with Grandpa, about money going into the bottle.
‘Come around this side, so you can greet the visitors’, my lady friend says. She makes me learn how to greet chirpily, in French. “Bonsoir Madame, Bonsoir Monsieur” (it’s a night market); “Approchez, n’hesitez pas”. Suddenly, hesitatingly, she says:
‘When we speak, it is like a musical instrument. There is no real need for words. It is what we want to say, to express, that reaches the other person. So, when you greet a visitor, find something nice about them first, think of that, then speak. Ok?’
What an extradordinary thing to say, when we have so many words at our disposal! I say that the only music I know is from the films I watch, and ask if I can come back tomorrow so she can explain all this better. She nods yes, then, ‘so you watch films?’
‘Yes,’ I prattle on, ‘I am allowed sometimes to sit on my own in Madame’s salon on a straight-backed chair and watch TV. I watch documentaries and Indian serials. Is that a good or bad thing? Hello?’
‘I am listening, dear Keshinee. Do you really wish me to reply?’
‘Er…’
‘Precisely. I listen to you. A reply is not always necessary.’
Presently a lady stops by, she is tallish and beautiful, her clothes are flowy and floaty, she smiles politely, without saying hello, and reaches for one of the crystal prisms.
‘I have a feeling it is for you,’ says my friend in her magnetic voice, but the visitor hastily puts it back, as if caught with a secret in her dreams.
My friend goes on, however, in a lower, softer voice, this time: ‘The prism and you, you chose each other. You are very beautiful. Allow your beauty to shine out, in the knowledge that you are worthy, like this prism.’
Later, I see a couple enter the market’s tent with an other-worldly air. The man is tall, striking by his incongruity, wearing a box-like top hat of all things, right here in Mauritius, at a Christmas market! In my childish mind, I am both thrilled and somehow scared, and ask my friend, ‘Is that like another kind of Father Christmas?’
‘Why not! If you believe he is, then that’s the truth for you,’ was her serious reply.
Top Hat Santa remarks as soon as he reaches us: ‘Quite surprising, this. Usually it is Do not Touch’, and scans all our things with dark eyes under bushy white eyebrows. His hair, also snow-white, is sticking out under the black hat, against his dark skin. He has a little beard, also white. I glance at my friend, almost holding my breath. It has become a game for us, observing the First Object of our visitors, together having a laugh and conjecturing reasons for the magnetic attraction.
‘Ah, life would be rather boring without a few surprises, don’t you think?’, she says teasingly.
There are several brass items on our table –lighthouses, telescopes, weighing scales, balls and bowls, chests, all miniatures. He laughs, and picks up, with a many-ringed hand, a brass egg, turning it this way and that, looking for inscriptions and letterings.
‘The beginning and the end,’ he says. ‘The circle of life’.
‘You’re good at symbolism, I see. And you have a mantra tattoo,’ she says, glancing at the back of his hand.
‘Yes. Life’s all about questions that have no answers. So it’s easier to be accepting, without too many expectations, and enjoy life while you can. Carpe Diem, you know…
‘Hmm. The egg is also a strong symbol. Of new beginnings and unmanifested dreams, and Carpe Diem, by the way, is more about living your best life now, about taking action now, instead of postponing it for later. Maybe it’s time for a new mantra?’, she says with a wink.
It’s getting late and I’m feeling a little sleepy with all this riddle-like talk. I’m about to say goodbye when I see another kind of visitor:
‘Look! There’s a dog come in the tent! I hope it doesn’t bite anyone!’ I exclaim.
‘Why think the worst of this creature? Let’s simply ask it what it wants. Remember, we want to use our thoughts and intentions to express something, before we speak with words. We listen to understand.
And, with the innocence of my ten years, I close my eyes and think the question: ‘Doggie, why are you wandering in here, and are you going to bite anyone?’
‘Well?’
‘I think he is simply hungry, and has smelt the food here.’
‘Indeed so. He is a stray, with no home and no one to care for him, so he must wander, sometimes far, almost always in danger, chased by people, and often not getting anything to eat for days.’
‘But why? Why doesn’t he have a home?’
‘A very good question, Keshinee,’ she says, as she fishes out a sandwich from her bag and places it on the grass, to be gobbled up by Blackie. ‘Perhaps tomorrow we shall have some politicians visit us, and we shall put them that question.’
In this time of darkness and confusion, where the world all too often forgets to be kind, and prefers to live behind a veil of ignorance and indifference, my wish for you is that you too, young or old, rich or poor, visit an enchanting Marché de Noël that will bring you hope, joy, friendship, courage, and wisdom, of the kind that lasts a lifetime, starting now.
Anita Ramgutty Wong, PhD.
