Who is keeping us safe

Our secu­rity guard comes to work at around 7am and knocks off at 6pm, and one of his respon­si­bil­i­ties is to wave — to me / at me / vaguely in my direc­tion, when I’m dri­ving out or dri­ving home.

When I’m walk­ing the dog out of the condo com­pound, his waves linger just a lit­tle longer, more like a salute, and is some­times accom­pa­nied by a ‘good morn­ing’, or ‘makan already ah?’

He is dili­gent enough to ask any­one who stops by his guard post to ask for direc­tions where they think they want to go. Oth­er­wise, if you just mosey up the dri­ve­way look­ing like you know what you’re doing, and where you’re going, he won’t bother you in the least. He has such respect for pur­pose­ful people.

Most days he’s seen on his mobile phone, yam­mer­ing away in Tamil about life in gen­eral before lunchtime beck­ons, and he rides off some­where to take lunch before com­ing back an hour later to take up his post and call some­one on the phone again to talk 29 to the dozen.

So I am a lit­tle bewil­dered one morn­ing as I walk Mac, that he approaches me and in the thick­est Tamil accent, says, “Food ah, your dog ah, food ah, he eat ah, no ah, eat ah, no ah, eat ah. beef ah, last night func­tion ah, pool­side ah, beef ah, your dog ah, eat ah. No ah? Can­not ah?”

It is only in the mid­dle of that sen­tence that he points to the grass verge, at a plas­tic con­tainer of what looks like beef ren­dang, only with a gazil­lion ants try­ing to drown them­selves in it because they fig­ure they can’t carry the whole thing off, might as well eat and die there.

“No, can­not”, I say, because not only is Mac not allowed to eat human food, ren­dang would’ve given him the shits, and ren­dang with ants, worse.

“Why ah? Can­not ah? Beef ah? Can ah”, says Secu­rity Guard Man in response.

I am kinda tired that morn­ing, so I sim­ply say “Can­not, thank you”, and walk off with Mac in tow, and as I do, Secu­rity Guard Man goes on for a bit, say­ing, “can­not ah? beef ah? can­not ah? your dog ah? can ah? can­not ah?” before he trails off, with a final “ah”, like a sigh.