​Sometimes, you do not plan for moments of exceptional beauty and joy – they are gifted to you. I was waiting at the Tiong Bahru Market* when I witnessed this ethereal image – the final glow of a December sky, racing to retire, as a distant thunderstorm gathers. As I snapped away, this Tiger-beer lady passed by, paused, and wiped out her mobile phone camera and started shooting as well.

* Tiong Bahru is one of the oldest historical housing estates in Singapore, having been created in December 1936 by the Singapore Improvement Trust (SIT), a few years before the outbreak of World War II. My parents lived in the new SIT flats when they got married and the whole family grew up in this estate after the war, before the home was sold more than 60 years later. My mother would recount the difficult times during the Japanese Occupation when my paternal grandmother and her would tend to the hardy cassava plot in the fields opposite the flats to sustain a staple for the family. The Tiong Bahru market was also one of the original ‘wet markets’ of Singapore, a legacy that we are all familiar with all over the world. Originally a few stalls clustered around shophouses, it became the Seng Poh Road market when proper stores and structures were built in January 1951. I grew up accompanying my mother to the market to help carry her shopping for fresh produce a few times a week. They form these intense memories of her strong arms, sunny back alleyways, the smell of newly minted rolls of textiles in crowded stalls, fluorescent-tinted fruit displays, and the pubescent taste of salted-plum juice from the drink-stalls, which became a life-long favourite.

(Lumix GX85 12-32mm; 1/60 sec; f4.1; iso 1600 December 2017)