I was at lunch at my favourite restaurant in Bangsar. Seated at the next table were a young couple and their young son – his feet were not yet grown enough to touch the floor, but he did not need a double-chair to reach his food. He must have been about seven years old.

The parents got their mixed rice and began eating. The boy did not get his order for some time. With a mop of black hair, contoured clumps for eyebrows, long lashes and fresh, simple clothes, he was handsome. His did not reveal what he made of his parents’ repeated, increasingly agitated attempts to get the servers to bring their boy’s meal. The boy waited quietly and patiently.

When his food finally came, he tucked in – neither fast nor slow, just diligent; probably a boy who does not waste food. His mother was next to him. As the boy lifted a fork-load of mee goreng to his mouth, his mother reached out and dotingly removed a piece of garlic from his fork. With her other hand, she tousled the boy’s hair before resting her arm on his shoulder and beginning a conversation with the boy’s father. The father, seated before the boy, listened quietly, while reaching out sporadically to pick at food from his son’s plate – one string of mee, a bit of spinach; the boy didn’t react. The father’s pleasure in the boy was as obvious as the mother’s.

Counting from 2003 to 2009, Teoh Beng Hock was person number 1,804 to die in custody. After Beng Hock, another person died in custody. His name is R Gunasegaran.

What a disconnect there is between the last two paragraphs! The first describes a family at lunch. The second speaks of deaths in custody over the life-span of a seven year old boy. I am surprised by myself: I am a fifty year old Indian man, at a restaurant in KL, watching and quietly celebrating the joy of a family having their lunch. AND I am thinking of a Chinese man and 1,804 others who died in custody. The dead-in-custody were all little boys and girls once; many had doting parents. Some of their parents are hurting over the dead-in-custody and wondering what really happened. Some are waiting for their beloved to return – because the dead-in-custody died nameless and the parents weren’t informed. Some of the dead-in-custody have sons and daughters who will never be part of a family scene like the one which caught my attention.

Beng Hock’s death has aroused something deep within me. My set and I spend time equipping ourselves, improving ourselves, securing ourselves. In our houses, we install grilles in every opening and we fit all manner of safety gadgets – cameras, alarms, sirens/auto-phone calls. In our cars, we install alarms and immobilizers. We forward emails about the latest techniques used by snatch-thieves, kidnappers, car-nappers. Our lives are precious to us.

Talk of such things is frequent in our gatherings, whether at home, at work, at restaurants, at places of worship, etc. Discovering that on average there are 3 deaths-in-custody every 4 days has caused me to wonder what we are doing about protecting ourselves from other threats – a government which is a sore-loser at the polls and is trying to destabilize opposition-lead states; about officials in the police, in prisons, in the AG’s chambers and in MACC who seem to be allowing themselves to be used as instruments of state. Are the lives of others precious to us?

Should our lives just go on – decorating, shopping, vacationing, praying, recreating? Or has the time come to behave like we are at war? How, in our speech and actions, do we recognize that the souls of our neighbours – including judges, corruption investigators, policemen, politicians, and prosecutors – are being enticed into doing things which can only bring harm to themselves and others? Do we not have a duty to warn people, to encourage and support them to avoid evil?

This gets personal. I need to review my conversations and activities for content. I need to ask what I said or did yesterday to give voice to the 1,805 and more who died-in-custody. I need to ask what I have stopped doing and what I have begun doing, because of Beng Hock and the 1,805.

I am confident there will be change – because integrity is not dead; cops, jailers and prosecutors are also daughters, sons, fathers and mothers. Darkness will be swept away by light. Evil lurks, but justice and mercy will prevail. There is a God, and He is not out for lunch.

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