Surrounded by metal and glass bangles glinting in the afternoon sun sits a woman of indeterminate age, with sturdy hands and a green bindi on her forehead. ‘Those are too big, see if these will fit you’ – she hands me a half-dozen striated glass bangles in tangerine and coral. But I want another colour, so she pulls several more plastic bags from under the shelves of her light beige pre-fab cupboard, trying to find my size, half a smile skating across her face. ‘It’s been a while since I last saw you.’ I don’t know her name, nor does she mine and I suspect she doesn’t really recognize me because at one point she recalls me as a child, an impossibility, because I have sporadically visited her bangle stand only since my mid-twenties, which is now over a decade ago. I don’t correct her. She probably figures her practised familiarity is good customer service and it doesn’t bother me. I also can’t tell if she looks older than all those years ago.
What I can tell is that there has been a visible upgrade to her business from selling bangles out of a couple of wicker baskets to an L-shaped plywood shelf and cupboard stand, a somewhat more permanent set-up. But her spot is subject to the benevolence of the handicrafts store in front of which she plies her trade, seven days a week, no days off except on rare occasions. Sitting under the store entrance awning, there is partial protection from sun and rain, but not the heat or sudden gusts of wind or downpours. On a day like this, a fiery 37 degrees Celsius, there is also a waft of mulch from the plant nursery a few feet away, with a stronger top note of refuse from a lake farther back, choked by ‘development’.
