The minute I stepped onto Campbell Lane in Little India, I was hit with a cacophony of noise from a shop selling small electronic goods and handphone accessories.
It took a few seconds for me to ascertain exactly what was blaring out of a large speaker placed on a table outside the unit.
“One dollar! One dollar! Everything for one dollar!,” a raucous voice blared through the microphone, with a diction much closer to Telangana than Trafalgar Square.
As if the Sunday afternoon crowd of people squeezing past each other along the sidewalks of Serangoon Road wasn’t enough, here was a man intent on making everyone’s last-minute Deepavali shopping a truly maddening experience.
Turns out, at the Crescent Mobile shop, ear pieces and bluetooth devices were all going for the low, low price of a single dollar. Not that the place was jam-packed with customers despite the jaw-dropping sale – but that’s what you get for trying to burst everyone’s eardrums.
Perhaps the noise, crowds and 35 deg C heat was all in keeping with the “idyll” of Little India, days away from the Hindu Festival of Lights, arguably the most celebrated day on the calendar for Indians everywhere.
If Christmas is all winter decor and colourfully wrapped gifts in shopping bags along Orchard Road, Deepavali is mandalas (geometric patterns that follow a circular shape) and plastic bags filled with jars of murukku in Serangoon Road.
There is one constant between the two sacred occasions though – everyone shops at the last minute.
On a giant purple banner with the words “Deepavali Festival Village” above a tented enclosure, the disclaimer “enter at your own risk” should’ve been printed in not-so-fine print.
I’ve been to a few arenas around the world for concerts and football matches and squeezed alongside thousands of people as we trekked from the street to the stadium seat. I was also once fortunate enough to attend a rock festival in Toronto, moshing with a crowd of 70,000, with no exit or toilet signs in sight.
But it was here, in Campbell Lane, in a narrow shopping alley no more than 200m long, where I learnt for a few harrowing minutes what claustrophobia – or life as a canned sardine – felt like.
Hanging from the tent’s ceiling were an endless array of garlands, trinkets and ornaments which suffocated the path even more. It didn’t make sense. With hundreds of people walking the stretch – no more than 3m wide – how could anyone stop to survey or purchase anything?
Yet, people did, causing anyone who was trailing to somehow push their way past or stop dead in their tracks. At one point, I stayed motionless for 15 seconds wondering if pedestrian horns might someday become a thing.
If India during the festive season is chaotic, then this was a microcosm of that very chaos. To say nothing of the fact that personal space does not translate into Indian culture for some reason – often giving the phrase “rubbing shoulders” almost a new meaning. Actually, you’d be thankful if it was just shoulders you were rubbing.
By the time I made it through to the other side, I gasped a breath of air and sat down next to a stall selling knock-off Gucci belts.
“Ten dollars,” the vendor said right before he plugged a microphone into a speaker.
