Papaya’s ‘Night Market’ stands on a tripod of Desperation, Choices, and Consequences -By Hashim Yussuf Amao

Desperation, choice, and consequence are seldom mistaken for separate strangers. They are not; they’re kin. Matter-of-factly, they move like a chain, with each link warmed by the hand that touches it. Desperation is the spark, choice is the motion it demands, and consequence is the smoke that lingers long after the flame has died. When the heart is shaken, the mind is often ravaged with a quickened pulse that convinces the mind that anything is better than stillness. But the end result? A life and moments bent, curved, and broken by many quiet and hurried yeses.

‘Night Market’ by Abdulraheem Abike Halimah Papaya echoes a powerful sermon against these desperate decisions that may feel like relief today yet turn into a debilitating ache years later. In a reverberating cinematic voice, Papaya preaches that nothing truly meant for you will require you to abandon your dignity, values, or inner quietude. If something demands your peace as payment, it is already too expensive. If it sounds too chaotic to be true, then it probably is.

Without a stretch of exaggeration, it took me by utter surprise that ‘Night Market’ is Papaya’s debut movie as a producer. Her minor acting impression in the 2020 short movie, “Two Way Street” had definitely ignited a passion in her which she decided to nurture professionally in this new movie. That a newbie actress and producer could deliver such a cinematic, brilliant, didactic, visually compelling, and star-studded movie was beyond my expectation. I ain’t gon lie. Intellectually, Papaya projects the reality of many Nigerians who appear rich and comfortable but have rather sworn an unseen combat with happiness. They look so great that many people would even use them as prayer points without realizing how chaotic the unseen parts of their lives are.

The protagonist, Nora, stands at the center of this unraveling. Love betrayed her through Francis, who handed his devotion to Sandra, her closest friend. Trust then collapsed, and emotion slipped its leash. You wouldn’t point a blaming finger at her; it isn’t a pleasant thing to sell two of one’s three canteens to sponsor one’s boyfriend abroad, only for him to return with a betraying heart. Like a fickle bird, Nora fled the scene of the union angrily that she got afflicted by a car accident, which transcended her to a metaphysical world.

In the metaphysical realm, she found herself in the NIGHT MARKET – not the kind of night market where harlots seek horny customers, but one where divine possessions like blood, soul, peace, comfort, and body parts are traded for fortune, political power, fame, and prosperity. Strangely, she saw many people haggle over jars that are filled with destinies waiting for their right owners and buyers. Raphael Anya, the dream seller, would tell Nora to make an order too, which Nora did by trading her respect for prosperity. The dream seller would thence arrest Nora’s pain while remanding her reality with them.

The dream seller then gave her Astria as her personal digital concierge, who regulates her comfort, happiness, temperature, and health, and everything that belongs to her flows through Astria. Nora was also given celebrities like Hermes, Pinkie Debbie, and James Brown as personal maid, stylist, and makeup artist. They were all stripped of relevance and recast as servants to Nora in her repossessed world. How surreal it is for Nora that the celebrities she once admired now answer at her beck and call. Power them hums softly beneath her skin. The world kneels. It feels like godhood. It feels like arrival. Her purchased dream gave her a glamorous life. She had first-class trips and her birthday celebrations in countries of her dreams in private jets that cut the sky open. She had expensive wares, shoes, watches, and gifts in her possession. Her purchased dream even gave her a mysterious partner, Prince, who happens to be a man of her dreams.

But like author George Eliot wrote in his evergreen book, Middlemarch, “The strongest principle of growth lies in human choice. When choice is driven by panic, growth mutates into regret.” Nora’s life started becoming a mirage with uncomfortable instructions. Same clothes, same moments, same gestures. Even intimacy is reduced to choreography. What once dazzled now suffocates her. Luxury rots into routine. Freedom curdles into labour. A once glamorous life thence becomes a burdensome, boring, scary, tiring, and worthless one. That she now wants her previous life back.

She thus returned to the night market to have her life and dinner reality back. Sadly, the dream seller told her that her life has been given to someone else. She has to get her life by trading it with something valuable: her sight. Which she eventually lost. She was left in blindness that drenched her in a deep pool of tears. Luckily, she was given a second chance to right her wrongs. Thus, after regaining her consciousness, she had to tell herself the truth that “Life isn’t like what we think it is. You can have everything. The money, the perfect dream. And still feel empty.” Mysteriously, she found her way back to the night market, where her sight was restored after she had learnt a great lesson.

How best could a star-studded movie – with heavy cast like Chidi Dike, MC lively, Sydney Talker, Tina Umez, Hermes, Zubby Okonkwo, Pinki Debbie, James Brown, Tina Aba, Sexy Steel, and many others – have lectured people that even in moments when the heart is racing and the mind is unheard, one should be careful of desperation and life-altering choices that could narrow one into a tunnel. For a choice made in calm weighs ounces, and one made in panic weighs tons. When the hand trembles, the wrong doors are praised simply because they open fast.

That the brilliant movie has garnered over 500k views in just 1 day on PapayaEx TV on YouTube tells how ‘edutaining’ it is. Its salient message is one that has unarguably pierced through the epicenter of viewers’ soul: when desperation rises, treat it as a warning bell, not marching orders. When a choice presents itself, examine the posture it asks of you. Does it ask you to shrink, hide, rush, or to compromise your center? If so, step back. Calm choices do not promise softness, but peace is preserved within them. And peace, once sold in haste, becomes painfully expensive to retrieve. The consequences of waiting are almost always softer than the consequences of panic. And the truly great people always understand the concept of timing and season.

Hashim Yussuf Amao
hashimlegalbard@gmail.com