he came across an apothecary, surrounded by mysterious coloured jars of medicines and other strange concoctions.

“What’s this for?” she asked, pointing to a red jar labelled Pinkrasure.

“It’s for pinkeye,” announced the apothecary proudly. “You need only apply a few drops on the affected eye, and it will be cured almost instantly.”

The child was suitably impressed. “And what’s this for?” she asked, pointing to a vermilion jar next to it labelled Irritasin.

The apothecary appeared embarrassed. “Well, Pinkrasure comes with some side effects, like eye irritation. Irritasin was formulated to counter the irritation.”

The child pondered this strange revelation. “And does Irritasin also produce side effects of its own?”

“Oh yes!” said the apothecary cheerfully. “Irritasin can cause the cornea to become inflamed. But you have nothing to worry about, because there’s Inflammacalm to soothe any such inflammation that may occur!” he pronounced, pointing to a green jar on the side.

“And does Inflammacalm have any side effects?”

The apothecary reddened. “In some very rare instances, it might lead to blindness in the user,” he admitted. “But there’s Blindcoxin here to prevent that!”

By now, the child had grown bored with the apothecary’s litany of drugs and counter-drugs. It seemed like everything he sold cured nothing and only created new problems. All this for a simple case of pinkeye, she thought ruefully.

She next saw two stalls, side by side, boasting impressive displays of orange-coloured crabs on neat square beds of shaved ice. The child stopped to admire the crabs, which were much larger than any crabs she had ever seen. She noticed that the crabs from the first stall had little red tags around their pincers, while the crabs from the second stall wore blue tags.

“Why do you tag the crabs in different colours?” the child asked the first stall keeper.

“To mark them as my crabs of course,” he answered.

“But why do you need to mark them as yours?” persisted the child.

“Because crabs are money. When you tag them as yours, your competitors cannot steal your crabs and pretend they are theirs,” he said with a dark glance at his neighbour.

How very strange city folks are, thought the child as she walked on. First, they imagine that the lives of these beautiful crabs can be sold for a few pieces of metal. Then, instead of sharing their crabs as we do at home, they tag them a different colour like chattel, and compete to see who can sell the most crabs first: Mr. Red or Mrs. Blue. For them, the crabs do not exist as living creatures. Where the crabs lie, they only see shining pieces of metal they call ‘money.’

The child was beginning to feel outraged at the disrespectful treatment of the poor tagged creatures, lying helplessly on the ice awaiting a buyer.

I wonder whether people are also looked at as bits of money too – but I suppose they must be, because everyone who walks by is seen as a potential customer, and customers mean money for the stall keepers. Wouldn’t it be funny, the child thought, if they actually sold people too, just like crabs? I wonder how many pieces of metal they would value me at, if they sold me…

With these unlucky thoughts in her head, the child passed more stalls in the market as she made her way along the thoroughfare.

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