A memory slender like a hairline wafts across the colourful bazaar. The 1980s, fairy tale life of pixies, gnomes and those precious gifts. Among those fairy tale wins, Mottai uncle's loving efforts to layer my curly bits of unruly mop of a head with colourful hairpins. Not one would stay on my unruly mop, the hair on my head like my brain inside was unruly, stunted and too unruly for such exquisite feminine hairpins. But I loved to possess them and Mottai uncle loved to buy them for me every month from the foreign market. I loved the feel of them, those colorful pairs of feminine artifacts but even one on my almost hairless head would stick out like a hairpiece. My eyes would sparkle at the sight of Mottai Uncle bringing them home and his would sparkle seeing my happiness. Today I am better than I was in the 1980s. I can buy that whole tray of colourful hairpins myself. In fact I have a fairly better bounce atop my mishmash head to clip away at least a couple of them. But then they are no longer the magical kind Mottai Uncle brought, they are no more part of stories of pixies and gnomes. I see them as they are now market commodities,
untouched by that magical world of hairpins and happiness that can make your hair grow long overnight. You just have to hold those magical pins in your little hands and make a wish. And you still have the months ahead, every month of those magical clips to make that wish again and again.