There are twelve steps from the pavement to the Tiong Bahru Market floor. I know because I counted them on a morning when I had forgotten my list and needed something to do with my hands. Twelve down, twelve up — the symmetry satisfies a part of my brain that otherwise finds grocery shopping mildly adversarial. The stairs are concrete, worn in the centre where decades of feet have agreed on the shortest path.
The market opens early, which is a euphemism for "before I am ready to be sociable." By eight, the vegetable aunties have arranged their greens with the precision of catalogue photography. Fish stalls hose down surfaces with a vigour that suggests personal grievance. The air holds salt, bleach, and something sweet from the bun stall near the escalator — not an official part of the wet market, but spiritually essential.
I buy what I can carry in one bag because the stairs punish overconfidence. On bad knees days — more frequent lately — I take them slowly, one hand on the railing that is always slightly damp. Younger shoppers bound past me with the energy of people who still believe their joints are permanent. I do not begrudge them. I was once a bounder too, before counting became preferable to speed.
Commerce here is conversational. Prices are spoken, not scanned. The auntie who sells chye sim remembers I prefer the smaller bunches. The fruit uncle tells me the mangoes are "not ready yet" even when they look ready to me, and he is always correct. Trust accumulates in these exchanges the way patina accumulates on copper — slowly, through repeated contact.
At the top of the stairs, the world reorders itself into pavement and parked cars and the bus stop where someone is always just missing a service by thirty seconds. I have missed it too. The bag is heavier on the ascent, which is physics and also metaphor if you are inclined that way. I am not, usually, but twelve steps make philosophers of many people.
On the way home I pass the old flats with curved balconies — Tiong Bahru's signature, photographed by tourists who never buy chye sim. The market stairs are less photogenic and more honest. They exist for function: to move bodies and goods between levels without pretending the exchange is glamorous.
I write this note with the bag emptied and the chye sim rinsed. Tomorrow I may forget the count and take the stairs without thinking, which is also fine. The number twelve is not sacred. It is simply the answer I got on a June morning when I needed to pay attention to something small and true.
The market will still be there when I return — same stairs, same aunties, same smell of bleach at the fish stall. Commerce in Tiong Bahru does not require my documentation to continue. I am glad of that. It leaves me free to write only when the counting feels worth the climb.