He helps run the city,he says,but can he get some respect?

He has heard of the attack on Jyothi Uday,inside an ATM near Corporation Bank Circle. He has also heard that Karnataka has now made it mandatory to have guards at all ATMs. The problems Damodar has faced are more in the nature of uncooperative bank customers and heavy-handed police,but he hopes that with the need for more guards recognised,he and others will get the respect for the task they perform.

Nearly 6 ft in height and weighing 55 kg,Damodar,a matriculate pass,had once nursed dreams of becoming a policeman. He had even cleared the recruitment drive conducted by the Orissa Police in his first attempt. However,while he was waiting for a call for training,he got to know that he may be posted in Naxal-dominated Malkangiri.

“While I would willingly fight for my country and lay down my life,what about my family? Can the government assure that it will provide for them after I am gone?” he says.

Bitter about the Naxal violence in his home state,Damodar accuses the state government of focusing its resources on fighting them. “Both the government and the private sector are directing all jobs and development in those areas,” he says,explaining that that was one of the reasons for the lack of opportunities in his native place.

He remembers clearly the day he arrived in Bangalore for the first time,getting off at the Yeshwanthpura railway station. “From the station,the agent took us to our prospective employers in a multinational security firm. The criterion for selection was simple — we had to possess the appropriate physical characteristics like height,weight and were expected to know and respond to basic courtesy words in English,such as ‘Good morning’,‘Thank you’,‘Hello’ and such,” Damodar says.

The “best” of them were immediately absorbed by the firm and taken for a seven-week training. Damodar recalls that the firm “offered a higher salary than that prescribed under the Minimum Wages Act and offered facilities like a banking account,provident fund and annual 15 days’ leave”,but he was not among those picked.

Damodar was eventually hired by a city-based security firm,and he has been working with it since then.

Except the one day in the week that he is off,Damodar gets up at 4.30 am,fixes a quick breakfast,generally steamed rice with either dal,chicken or boiled egg,and then packs food for both lunch and dinner. His rented room,near Avalahalli at K R Puram,is 23 km from his office and the bus journey takes nearly an hour. “In the city,the rent for the size of my room is nothing less than Rs 10,000. It’s impossible for me to think of accommodation close to my place of work,” Damodar,who earns Rs 9,700 a month,says.

He returns home in the night,after a 14-hour shift. At home,his source of entertainment and pride is an old computer. “It took a great deal of time for me to collect enough money,but I was able to buy it. I have fixed a TV tuner card,and can watch cricket matches on it,” Damodar says.

He confesses that adjusting to the local culture and food habits was initially a problem. “The language seemed strange. Seniors would talk to us assuming us to be locals,and a number of times we faced rebuke because we couldn’t understand them.”

Damodar has picked up Kannada since,though he isn’t confident enough to strike a conversation with locals in the language. He claims that the same multinational agency that once rejected him also approached him for work later,but he refused.

Some days are worse than others though. While due to the presence of security guards in malls and establishments,people have got used to them,often they don’t get “adequate support”,Damodar says. He talks about a colleague who was abused and beaten up by a customer because he asked him to switch off his mobile phone inside an ATM kiosk. “Instead of telling the customer to fall in line with the rules,the bank staff humiliated the guard by asking him to apologise to the customer. The next day he was told by his agency that he lacked courtesy and was posted as a parking valet,” he says.

With security being an “unskilled” industry,there is never a shortage of workers,particularly from Orissa,Bihar,Assam and Manipur. Damodar says this allows agencies to take advantage of the workers. Some agencies do not provide guards even basic requirements such as a wand,torch,shoes and a sweater as it gets chillier. Guards often work up to 12 hours without a break,and get only meagre hikes. If they are found absent from their post,Rs 500 is deducted from their salary each time.

Very few agencies offer privileges such as annual holidays. Guards who go on leave either lose their pay or jobs. “The guards are at the mercy of employers when it comes to leave,” says Damodar,who hopes for the best everytime he goes on leave,banking on his personal rapport with his boss.

After his father passed away in 2011,Damodar has a mother,wife and a three-year-old daughter back home. He misses them a lot,but can’t afford to get them to Bangalore.

What hurts him the most though is how guards are under suspicion should things go wrong. “We face suspicion if there is a theft. Police resort to any measure to make us confess to the crime. I have seen colleagues of other agencies picked up on doubt,and later charged with the crime. Finally,when they are released,the agencies refuse to pay their dues and terminate their contracts for ‘criminal activity’,” he says.

In the years that he has been in the city,Damodar has seen the role of the security guard expand from being just the man at the gate to multi-tasking as a receptionist,checking ingoing and outgoing mails,frisking suppliers,etc.

Despite their relevance to the city’s multi-crore establishments,he sighs,their job continues to attach the stigma of not being respectable enough. “When someone from my village asks what I do for a living,I simply say that I work in a company. In my village,they say one can be a labourer,but being a security guard is considered shameful.”