Song of a Reformed Headhunter

 Weekly column for the Singapore Unbound newsletter. Sign up here . Introduction to the 2020 Singapore Literature Festival in NYC (Oct 1-3) I am haunted by the ghost of Sakthivel Kumarvelu. As an economic migrant, he found his way from India to Singapore in the hope of a better life. His dream was crushed in 2013 when he was killed by the private bus that whisked him and his fellow workers away from downtown to distant dormitories, out of the sight of Singaporeans. He died of a traffic accident, some say. It is more accurate to say that he died of a world of social and economic inequities. Or as Bangladeshi poet Muhammad Sharif Uddin, also a migrant worker in Singapore, puts it in his powerful elegy for the dead man, “Velu was trapped in a labyrinth of laws.” Velu’s death sparked off—what should we call it? The official version of events calls it a riot. We might call it something else—an uprising. Certainly the violence was caused by deep and justified grievances. A...

Palinode VII Remember that construction worker run over by the bus, setting off a riot? I see him in every Indian here, short or tall, handsome or devastated, starving or sleek-headed and satisfied. I can’t help it. Why can’t I see Rajaratnam our Deputy Prime Minister or the guitarist Alex Abisheganaden instead? I go up, like getting on a bus, to every Indian here and I ask, are you Sakthivel Kumaravelu? And they say, every one of them, smiling, or grimacing, or furrowing the brow, Don’t you wish for me to be him? Reuters: Migrant workers fear massive Singapore dormitory lockdown is coronavirus timebomb. Image: Centurion Corporation