Around home this month, red lanterns are left burning to repel demons and ancestors wander purposefully seeking fulfillment on the earth. Our neighbours protect us each year from these hungry ghosts with black tea, oranges, and candy of a peculiar pink and white. Crawling with ants, they resemble fat gums with teeth still embedded, piled beside the long red candles.
The usually litter free streets are filled with strips of paper money, burned to appease lost relatives along with paper cars, cell-phones and other appliances. Each evening behind the condo, from the pool, I can see the plumes of smoke from the offerings. Incense spikes the air and the footpath verge has a patina of red wax droppings.
I miss the grass-side offerings when they are not here. You can walk past and see hordes of industrious and no doubt cheerful ants carrying away the candy. Brightly decorated flags are improbably pushed into brown, pork floss covered cakes and fruit is carefully piled into triangles.
In the early hours of pre-dawn, monkeys cross the Malayan railway from the rainforest and forage in our gardens for the food. They are gone by sun-up, only the few bravest, those willing to risk encountering a dog, remain. When a pet appears they swing high into tree branches and chatter wildly, clutching hard won prizes of paper money and oranges in their hands.
The condo guards see them off by walking the fences running a stick along the rails.
Monkeys are not afraid of ghosts.
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