The Security Guard
Photo: Karan Madhok
Fiction: ‘Suddenly, a new hunger arose inside. A desire for instant retribution enveloped him, a sudden need to right this particular slight. “I am not your servant,” he said. “Talk with respect.”’
In the security outpost by the gate of a big, walled housing society somewhere in the outskirts of Delhi, a guard let out a yawn, while extending all the way back to put his body weight on the creaky wooden chair. Then, as if under the propulsion of a lazy slingshot, he prodded his elbows towards the table ahead.
This droopy-eyed man, with an unkempt stubble and a fledgling paunch, tried to keep himself awake. His sagging chin rested on the back of hands. He played some Bhojpuri songs from the phone placed on the table. None of the entrants into the housing society—whether those who merely flashed their entrance credentials without stooping to glance at his face or the humble souls who made themselves still humbler by greeting him with a ‘Namaste’—taxed themselves over the lyrics to the music.
The spell of this post-midnight medley was disrupted when three figures breezed past his station, rushing forward without a care for the check-in formalities.
Miffed at this affront, the guard mumbled some choice words for the Bade Sahabs. He rushed out of his square, blue-and-creamy pink hut to haul back the offenders to fill up the visitors’ register.
“Sir, wait!”
Eclipsed under the shadow of the B Wing tower, he could see that this trio consisted of a male escorting two females. As if actors following a director’s cue, they turned around and stared curiously back at him. The guard was dressed in an unpressed light-blue shirt, with a patch of Sing Security Services over his right chest; the h from the first word had failed to survive the continued ravages of a rough detergent. He wore uncreased dark-blue trousers which had been stitched over at several places by his wife.
When the tallest of dark outlines chose to stand his ground, the guard felt the back of his thighs stiffen, making him feel as if he was about to falter a step or two.
“Sir, Signature.”
The guard’s blue shirt helped cloak his insecurities. The task at hand eased the tension.
The man nodded from a distance.
“Oh, yeah. I forgot. Put it as Rish Raghuram, visiting D-421…”
The words that followed were undecipherable, even as the lead protagonist hastened towards his destination, with the co-stars in tow. Things weren’t quite done for the guard though. The society rules clearly stated that all visitors needed to fill up the signature themselves at the entrance gate.
The guard rushed forward. In an earlier life, where the daily rigours of manual labour were a part-and-parcel of the game, he would’ve hardly broken a sweat. But now, in the comforts of regular air-conditioner access in the common recreation area, he felt himself short of breath.
This performance couldn’t last long as other guards appeared to the Sahab’s rescue, making a run to intervene. The guard wore a delirious smile on his face as he was ripped away from his prey. He jostled with his comrades, almost begging for another round.
“Hello …Sir… need your signature for entry.”
Rish, the leader of the pack, made an agitated turn. Thin folds of skin had appeared on his forehead, and his eyes shortened. He wore a silky, multicoloured shirt, embedded with designs of exotic animals. The guard had seen garments like these before. ‘V-E-R-S-A-C-E L-E M-A-S-C-H-E-R-E.’ Society residents, when out on vacation, had often instructed him to take the delivery of this “very, very important” item.
The guard had forced his brain to gobble up the spelling. He wouldn’t have remembered this, but for several weeks after, a number of society residents would turn up and ask him to pronounce the name.
“Abey saale,” Rish said. “Now you’ll tell me what to do, huh? Fuck off!”
It was as if this harsh bark, emanated invisible bolts of lightning to strike the guard. He took a couple of steps back, as if receding from an invisible ‘Laxman Rekha’.
As he looked down, he realized that his left hand had clasped three digits of his right hand. His left elbow passed on its tremor downwards, and its effects were fully visible in the quaking thumb and little finger of his right hand. The guard recalled this predicament from his days in school, when he had folded his palms together to recite a poem, but after failing to go beyond the first line, faced the teacher’s wrath, and worse, the embarrassment in front of his classmates. He had fretted and shook around without answering. As expected, a summary thrashing from the teacher had ensued.
The tears that followed weren’t as much related to the physical pain from the teacher’s steel scale, as they were to the memory of the morning dahi-cheeni, which his mother had given as a good luck charm.
In the darkness outside B Wing, a giggle from one of the girls lifted the guard’s face. Though only a shade of lamplight fell on them, he could make out that the girl who laughed at him wore a checkered black-and-red skirt. The other girl, dressed in a noticeably shorter black dress, bore an almost embarrassed look.
Suddenly, a new hunger arose inside. A desire for instant retribution enveloped him, a sudden need to right this particular slight. “I am not your servant,” he said. “Talk with respect. I am not unduly stopping you. We work for the society. We are just following the—”
So sincere was the parroting of his monologue, that the guard only witnessed a white splash from Rish’s direction before his world blacked. The punch left the guard on the cemented floor, and a volley of abuses ensued from his assailant. There were a few people nearby in this quiet night, viewing this exchange from a distance: other guards, love birds who were preparing for the upcoming semester exams in the common recreation area, and a couple of old gentlemen out to enjoy the late-night breeze. All of them moved cautiously towards the battlefield.
The girl in the short black dress covered her mouth with her hands as she watched. The other girl, however, added a gleeful exclaim to this blood-soaked air. “He fucking deserved it, Rish! Give the bastard another pounding.”
Rish moved towards the guard with an exaggerated swagger, and then held up his left leg over the body.
“Babe,” he said. “Time for a reel!”
The guard, however, had been reinvigorated. The heady concoction of physical pain, the bare-legged women, memories of bosses who had treated him like a dog, of madams who’d get him bit by their dogs… all of it made the guard recall an older self, much used to violent altercations. He pulled down his tormentor’s legs and slammed his body against the floor. A loud thud followed. Then, the guard jumped over Rish, landing blow after blow.
This performance couldn’t last long as other guards appeared to the Sahab’s rescue, making a run to intervene. The guard wore a delirious smile on his face as he was ripped away from his prey. He jostled with his comrades, almost begging for another round. But it was not to be.
He continued to smile much after the disengagement. It was as if he had cured the pain of that dahi.
*
The oval-faced figure looked like he was devouring the words in front of him. His folded hands rested on his lips. The guard tried to read his reactions, but after failing to do so, went about surveying the surroundings.
There were many shelves behind the lawyer, were filled with heavy books and journals. The table in front of him was occupied by an array of pens, papers, and files. To his left was a space filled up with sofas and a wall where a few portraits were hung. To his right, was a computer setup with a live cricket match. His face glanced at its screen for five-ten seconds at every two minutes or so.
The guard’s interest though lay strictly with the file in the lawyer’s possession.
Suddenly, the lawyer man looked up. At first, this look brought the guard to attention, too. But he soon realized that this was a look that looked past him, a look which he’d known well from his last workplace. It hadn’t been long since he had been fired.
A slim, neatly-dressed girl entered the room. The guard recognized her as the lady who had patiently listened to his narrative after the incident, and taken copious notes.
Now, the oval-faced lawyer raised his finger even as his nostrils bloated and his eyes ran through the girl, “Beta, this is a clear-cut violation of the vision of the makers of our constitution…”
The guard lost track of anything that was said hereafter. He focussed instead on portraits of the great figures, Nehru and Ambedkar, smiling at him from the frames placed right above the shelves.
His lips relaxed and spread across his face. He could feel a lightness in the air.
*
As soon as the bidi’s smoke hit the guard’s throat, his body ejected a bout of phlegm and saliva on to his shirt. He went behind the tea stall to clean the mess using the municipality tap. This shirt had once been white—the shirt he had worn all week—but now its colours faded into a dirty yellow. The chaiwallah outside the housing society bore an almost deserted look at eleven in the morning. The regular peons and office boys had already set off for their daily work rituals.
He took another drag before letting out a small cough, all the while running his fingers through a piece of paper. Surrounding him were several discarded chai cups and bidis.
He spoke alone, practicing a plea that he would present before the society chairperson.
The man seated at the register—the seat that the guard once occupied—now offered him a terse, quick judgement. “Your entry is barred by orders from the society committee.”
“Mai-baap,” he said. “I wouldn’t have stopped that sahab if I had known what would follow. Other agencies are also not accepting me now. Please forgive me. I’ve always been loyal to you.”
His shaking hands lifted the piece of paper.
“My daughter has been very ill over the last two weeks. All the money has gone into her treatment. Even the chulha at our home hasn’t been lit over the three days. Here is the prescription.”
He paused and then blurted out, “I was tricked. Please help me sir, I’ll do whatever you say!”
His red, puffy eyes darted around the floor. A series of disjointed pictures ran across his mind. One where he assisted the chairperson’s Cocker Spaniel for its walks. Another where he helped maintain the chairperson’s terrace garden.
He neatly folded the paper and placed it in his pocket. He’d been facing away from the society during the monologue.
As he turned, the tall, lonesome grey walls tried their best to sheath the towers within, but failed to contain the opulent designs which stood in dark contrast to their poor neighbourhood. The guard found it strange that in so many years, he’d never found the time to observe his workplace from outside.
He tried to place the society chairperson’s house somewhere in these decks of flats. His eyes ran through the tower of daftis. He was momentarily dragged out of this by the smell of the freshly-prepared ginger-laden tea by the chaiwallah, but the decaying smell of those daftis brought him right back into the memory. The girl in the lawyer’s office, neatly dressed as ever, tried to assuage him.
“I’m sorry,” she had said, “but sir has been busy with so many habeas corpus writs of late. I’m sure you’ll be able to meet him in the evening.”
It had been seven months of assurances and wait. If he could place it, the guard knew that he would snatch right at this file and tear it to pieces.
Now, as he crossed the road, the sight of the blue-and-creamy pink hut near the gate made him wipe the sweat from his face, as if the sweltering heat had suddenly dawned on him. He wondered if the air conditioners in the common recreation area had been properly serviced this summer.
His former, fellow comrades took some time to recognize the tense thing that stood before them. They were still examining the eyes that sunk deep into the sockets, when the guard requested to enter.
The man seated at the register—the seat that the guard once occupied—now offered him a terse, quick judgement. “Your entry is barred by orders from the society committee.”
The guard stood in silence. When the line was repeated, his hands reluctantly went to retrieve the piece of paper in his pocket. But at that moment, he saw in a distance inside the society. A younger man—another guard from his own village—who was out on a stroll, with the chairperson’s Cocker Spaniel in tow.
The guard turned at his comrades minding the gates. Tense faces. Stares borne out of disgust and irritation. He looked down at his yellowing shirt again. In that moment, he, too, wished that he was wearing a Versace Le Maschere.
***
Divy Tripathi is an independent journalist and writer from India. His cricket writings have been published in Wisden, ICC and Cricket Web. His cinema related works have seen the day in MUBI's Notebook, Firstpost and The Quint. His works of fiction have been published in Active Muse and Indian Periodical. You can find him on Twitter: @DivyTripathi7 and Instagram: @divytripathi7.
