Constance Singam: I think it is important that more of us write

Constance Singam has been described as the mother of Singapore’s civil society. A patriot, a libertarian and a fighter, she describes her recently published memoir Where I Was (Select Publishing, Singapore) as a Memoir from the Margins.

“Her baby steps into the world of activitism started when her husband of 18 years, journalist N.T.R Singam, died of a heart attack in a private hospital because of a cardiologist’s bad judgment,” writes veteran Singaporean journalist P N Balji in a profile of her in Yahoo Singapore. “A letter she wrote to The Straits Times, A Rest In Hospital Became A Nightmare, triggered a debate about the standard of patient care in private hospitals with the government moving in to act.”

After her husband’s death in 1978 when she was 42, Constance decided to take charge of her life.  She moved

 to Melbourne to do an honours degree in literature. After she returned to Singapore, she joined Aware (now Singapore’s leading gender equality advocacy group) and worked on issues such as domestic violence against women and underperformance of Indian students in schools, among others.

“Whether it is Kerala, that narrow-strip of land in south India where everybody has an opinion on everything and where she lived for seven years as a child, or Singapore, where she spent almost all of her 77 years, she is a patriot,” writes Balji. “She could have decided to make Australia her home, disappointed with the events back home.”

In this exclusive interview with Kitaab, Constance Singam discusses her memoir Where I Was (her first solo title as an author), why she wrote it and what issues bother her as a concerned citizen of Singapore.