under the blanket

A quiet Friday night supper turned into quite an adventure, which ended with a trip to the police station at midnight.

My lurve* and I were at the hawker centre at Adam Road, after my night assignment, greedily eating lala and ice kachang.

[* I have three lurves, all of them gorgeous babes. And no, I’m not lesbian. We just lurve each other very much.]

Suddenly, she realised her bag, which was placed beside her, was moving and this short Chinese man in red was walking very quickly away with it.

With lightning quick reflexes, she threw down her chopsticks and chased after him. I was so engrossed in searching for the last lala among the shells that I didn’t even notice him take her bag. As he almost reached one of the exits, she shouted: “Stop that man!”, just like in those Crime Watch programmes.

Immediately, this giant of an Indian man in a blue T-shirt sprang up from his seat with amazing speed and dexterity, considering how difficult it is to slide in and out of those hawker centre benches, and gave chase. No one else even budged from their seats, including me. My reflexes were so retarded that my chopsticks were still poised in midair. All I saw was a flash of red, and then a flash of blue. Anyway I couldn’t run with my bai kar in heels.

The snatch thief abandoned his loot and ran for his life. My lurve retrieved her bag and sat down. By now, everyone in the hawker centre, which is circular and sort of like an amphitheatre, was staring at our table.

We thought that was the end of it, and were relieved that her wallet and everything else were intact. As we were excitedly rehashing the brief chase -- by this time, we were both clutching our bags protectively -- the Indian guy returned. He had chased the thief all the way out to the road and caught him. Our hero!

Holding him by the collar, our hero ordered the thief to sit down and told us to call the police. While waiting for the police to arrive, the thief kept protesting that he had accidentally hooked the bag and he ran only because he was afraid we’d accuse him of stealing it. By this time, we were really the centre of attraction, and hawkers kept coming up to us to ask us what happened.

When the police finally got there -- it seemed to take very long cos the guy kept insisting his innocence so tiresomely and the Indian guy had to stand over him and command him to sit down and wait -- we handed the thief over and asked for the guy’s name to thank him. And it turned out that he was the Tampines Rovers player, Sasikumar. He seemed to be very paiseh at being recognised.

Because of his public-spirited actions, there was an award ceremony this morning, and the media circus descended. They are going to be on radio and TV and in the papers. They are gonna be stars for the day.

I’m so thankful that he didn’t attempt to snatch my bag, cos with my slow reflexes and total concentration on the lala, he would have definitely succeeded in getting away. The unfortunate thief must cursing himself to have targetted a quick-thinking journalist and to have attempted to out-run a fleet-footed soccer player.