The Magic of the Walking Stick

 

In the second year of my eighties, for my birthday, my daughter presented me with a walking stick, a Malacca Cane, with a polished wooden knob and a bronze collar beneath the knob. The cane not only steadied my walk and gave me a hold to haul myself up from low chairs, but it also became a pole to vault me across open drains that crisscrossed the streets and pavements.

On the streets, you are seldom noticed. Everyone is going somewhere or returning from somewhere, stopping only to cross a street or for a bus that is always too early or too late. The world shrinks to individuals and shows itself only as parts of a garment not properly tucked away.  The crowded pavement is no place for contemplation or consideration. Individual purpose blurs the world, obscuring the meandering beggar, or the man with the walking stick. The individual retreats into himself; everyone is an island that is moving.

But the wet market is another world. Under its high steel rafters, vendors standing behind tiled stalls draw attention ceaselessly to what they sell: vegetables, fish, chicken, and meat. Everyone is looking, touching, and probing the goods before a purchase. Conversations are shouted across the stalls. It is a place of incessant bargaining, a lively theatre of haggling that you never find in the sterile aisles of a supermarket.

There is no isolation in the wet market; everyone is noticed or demands to be noticed. Even the infant lying in a crib under a stall is bawling for attention. Transactions split the market world into myriad fragments awaiting connection for the sale after the haggling.

Yet, the moment the cane appeared, the rhythm changed. A silence enveloped my presence. Shoppers moved aside, offering their hands in support. There was no haggling at the stalls. Instead of the usual tussle over price, the vendors took it upon themselves to choose the finest produce they had to offer. They discounted the prices without my asking, and they carefully arranged the goods into bags tied specifically to be easy to carry. When they saw my hands were full, the transaction didn't end at the counter. One or two of the workers would leave their stalls to carry the bags all the way to my car. When I offered a tip, they brushed it away with a smile, leaving me with the strange, humbling feeling that by allowing them to help, it was I who had done them the favour.

I have walked the market for more than fifty years, from the time it was built. I was pushed, shoved, and slipped more than once on the slippery floor. I had witnessed generational changes of children helping at the stall, taking over as they grew up. Familiar faces disappeared, and new ones were added, but there was seldom time to inquire about the people I knew who were no longer there. Then, on the first day with my cane, I saw the kindness that was always there.

It is a striking irony of aging that a tool designed to support my declining physical strength became the very instrument that revealed the enduring strength of human kindness.