A long time ago in Singapore

It would have been quite a long time since any of you net-savvy, jeans-clad, career-oriented, city folk(am not being critical here, I too belong to this category :P), would have heard a tale beginning with the words, "A long time ago...".

Most of the tales we tell each other are gossip, loose statements broken-telephoned into sensational stories or just stupid things we tell each other about others(the third person category) to keep our low self esteemed selves content, because this third person has bettered us, angered us, ignored us or just shown us who we are. And the cycle continues.

This is about the time, I begin lose the point of the post, and fade into an altogether new topic, which is sometimes not just totally irrelevant to what I wanted to write about, but contradictory. Just like one of those tale-tellers I was talking about in the above paragraph. But not today, today I am focused.

So here goes, ahem...(clears throat)

A long time ago. Mind you, not too long ago. About the time that computers were still considered to be a neat thing, spitting was still legal in Singapore and homosexuality was still thought to be non-existent. Around this time, in an undeveloped suburb tucked away in the centre of Singapore, now known as Little India, there lived a street hawker by the name of Hussain. But this is not his story. This is the story of one of Hussain's 7 children's (this is gramatically correct mind you GRE folk, chaar hazaar words ratne se angrezi nahin aa jati) uncle's, wife's, daughter's, brother. Now this fellow was a very cunning and shrewd and cunning, but neither his shrewdness nor his cunningness, made him extraordinary, so there's no point in telling his story.

This ordinarily shrewd, with normal cunningness, had a friend called Mustafa, and-you guessed it right-this is his story. This guy, not so coincidentally, was also a street hawker. There were a lot of them here and there. And like, many street hawkers, or rather I should say any professional, even today, anywhere in the world, he was not satisfied with his professional life.

But such was his level of dissatisfaction, that he was determined to change his life for the better.(I guess the 'for the better' part was unnecessary, but lite)

Like a lot of such rags-to-riches stories, Mustafa's life is shrouded in mystery. He is known to have used all means possible to rewrite his destiny. He made friends, he made foes, but what is most important is that he made a fortune, and that's what makes him different. 

I can relate to you one of his crooked means to earn dosh. During the time, when globalization was just another word in the dictionary, and only time it came up in discussions, was when discussing whether it has an 's' or a 'z', prices of commodities varied immensely from country to country. This was particularly true of gold, which was one item of choice for our hawker with an attitude.

He would invite friends from India(that's another story... one I don't know of, but can probably cook up), pay for their stay and other expenses, and send them back home, covered with gold. The point of this was that there cannot be any excise duty for worn items, but only for items carried. So these guys would come to Singapore, having seen gold only through jewellers' window panes, and on returning home would be covered from head to toe in the yellow metal. 

Needless to say, if someone could go to so much risk and effort to do this, the profits would have been equally high, by the direct proportional law between risk and profitability. 

Using this and many more tricks, our Alladin(am referring to Mustafa, in case you've missed the point) built an empire, using bricks and cement(I dislike the term, using his own bare hands, so here's my rebellion). The fellow now owns a hunungous shopping complex in Little India, and sells everything. I am going to refrain from saying, from this to that, and am simply going to say, everything and that should suffice. 

This shopping complex, like our hero, Mustafa, is again unlike any other. Other than the availability of all and sundry items there, their supply chain is just fascinating. As amazing as it may sound, they have no godown. Items come and items sell. They sell watches in kilograms, digicams are given off as free gifts... I guess you get the message. 

As of now, Mustafa is probably sitting in his pedestal, red-bearded, sporting a white topi and kurta pajama, overlooking his colossal empire which almost runs Little India. His gold selling days are probably over, but I'm sure that after so many years, he'd have his own set of tricks up his sleeve.