Jumbos turned him around

It was the late 1980s and the team formed to create the Night Safari was eager to start building. A market research company came with bad news: Its surveys showed that on a good night, the proposed park would draw 600 attendees. That estimate, if accurate, would mean the attraction could not hope to break even financially. The project seemed doomed even before it had started.

Mr Vijaya Kumar Pillai, 62, known to his friends as Kumar, was a member of that early team. He laughs when he remembers the report's dismal figures. The Singapore public had no idea what a nocturnal zoo could be like - the Night Safari would be the world's first - and did not seem interested, the research showed.

"We thought, that can't be possible. It doesn't make sense. We decided that the marketing team was wrong," he says.

The Night Safari group stuck to its original plan to build a park capable of hosting 1,200 visitors a night, twice the report's projections. It was a figure based on personal experience. He was there in 1973 when the Singapore Zoo opened. It was mobbed.

"The queue of cars went all the way up to Mandai Road," he says.

The Night Safari team predicted that in a good year, the new park would see 500,000 admissions.

"That first year," says Mr Pillai, "we had 750,000 admissions".

When the Night Safari opened almost exactly 20 years ago on May 26, 1994, a throng showed up and it has never really let up since.

Instead of poor take-up, the newly built venue's problem was one of crowd control, of expanding capacity as well as diverting and channelling visitors into less crowded zones. Over time, its nine trams became 24 and its 250-seat amphitheatre became a 600-seater, then an 800-seater.

Today, demand still nips at the heels of capacity. All four shows at the amphitheatre normally have full houses. Attendance at the Night Safari last year was 1.1 million, while its sister attraction, the Singapore Zoo, drew 1.7 million visitors.

That initial marketing estimate was wildly inaccurate, Mr Pillai believes, because the team did not poll enough tourists. They make up between 70 and 80 per cent of attendees.

Mr Pillai does not have a degree in zoology or veterinary science, or any other degree. His place on the 10-member founding team of the Night Safari was secured through his deep practical knowledge of management, both of animals and the people who care for them. He joined the Singapore Zoo in 1972, some months before its opening.

Starting as a keeper, he rose to become assistant curator at the zoo before transferring to the Night Safari, also as assistant curator, before becoming its general manager in 2011.

In January last year, he was promoted to director of zoology at Wildlife Reserves Singapore, making him the most senior among the people managing the animal collections. He reports to the Chief Life Sciences Officer, Dr Cheng Wen-Haur.

Wildlife Reserves runs four attractions: Jurong Bird Park, Night Safari, Singapore Zoo and the recently opened River Safari.

Mr Pillai works with each park's zoology heads.

"I'm reading up on birds and fishes," he says with a smile. Until recently, he was familiar only with the collections at the Night Safari and Singapore Zoo.

He had come out of national service at age 20 with three GCE O levels in hand.

Unlike many zoo employees who say they have had a lifelong passion for animals, he says he was never particularly drawn to them as a child. He was attached to his family's dog while growing up in the civilian quarters at Nee Soon camp, where his father was chief plumber for the British army, but that affection had not translated into a general affection for animals.

The reason he joined: Clint Eastwood.

"I had a fascination with horses from watching his movies - For A Few Dollars More, The Good, The Bad And The Ugly. I loved the way he rode a horse and I always wished that I could ride like him," he says.

He had been a fairly good student when he was in Nee Soon Primary, he says, but in Upper Thomson Secondary, he found that he preferred to be with friends at the movies than studying.

So when a friend, already a zoo employee, told him that his workplace was hiring, Mr Pillai showed up. The inexperienced Mr Pillai was at first a volunteer, but when he proved himself, he was offered a full-time keeper's job. He was willing to do anything as long as he could work with, and ride, the ponies. The zoo kept its promise and he worked with the equines, but he found that he clicked with other species too.

In those early days, new keepers had to work out the finer details of animal care together. There were a few surprises. For instance, keepers assumed that the king cobra was like other cobras, in that its diet consisted of small mammals such as rabbits and birds like chickens. But it refused to eat any of these. Then, he recalls now, someone found out that the king cobra's diet consisted solely of other snakes.

As the zoo's collection grew, Mr Pillai discovered he had an affinity for large mammals. When the rhinos came, he became their first keeper. He grew close to the sweet-tempered female, Jenny. While she rested, he would too, laying on the ground next to her, reading. In the normal course of rotations, he was moved to care for Asian elephants.

Working with them was to be something of a turning point in his life. The young man had been, by his own description, something of a hot-head.

"Working with elephants turned me around. Being hot-tempered with them doesn't work," he says.

He bonded with the female Anusha, who was particularly sweet-tempered, and Komali, who arrived as a boisterous youngster in 1974.

He spoilt her rotten. Komali developed a habit of grabbing spectacles and breaking them - a habit he thinks he might have curbed had he been willing to use punishment, he says.

Mr Pillai had found his calling.

"I was truly having the best time of my life, working with animals," he says, but his parents had other opinions.

When he signed up with the zoo, he turned down other job offers that did not require as much manual labour and that seemed much safer.

"My father thought I was nuts," he recalls, especially after an orang utan bit his hand while he was trying to feed the primate. It was not just the orang utans that would have a go at him. The gibbons, too, would leave teeth marks on him on five separate occasions.

He turned down a promotion because it would take him away from close physical contact with the elephants he cared for so much, agreeing to it only after he saw that he could do more to protect them if he could set policy.

His father died in 1993, leaving behind his mother, a housewife.

He is the oldest of seven siblings. He has one remaining brother (two having died) and three sisters.

His wife, Ms Santie Gunasekara, is deputy director of marketing communication at the National University of Singapore. They have two children, a son and daughter, both in secondary school.

The former chief of Wildlife Reserves Singapore, Mr Bernard Harrison, 62, joined the zoo in its founding days, as had Mr Pillai, and worked with him up to the time Mr Harrison left the organisation in 2002.

"Kumar is a remarkable man. He was attached to the elephant section and just loved them," says Mr Harrison in an e-mail interview. Mr Pillai was trade union chief for the zoo and was the most gracious negotiator, standing up firmly for the rights of the staff, says the Wildlife Reserves' former chief, who now runs a zoo consultancy, Bernard Harrison & Friends.

Along with his empathy for animals, Mr Pillai has a sharp manager's mind, a man blessed with "sheer personality coupled with a breadth of interest and talents". His rise - "through the keeper ranks to Senior Assistant Curator (to the) zoological running of the Night Safari and eventually General Manager of Night Safari" - is notable. "It's actually not a remarkable achievement in some other countries, but for Singapore, so conscious of degree- holders, it is remarkable and is a mark of the quality of the man. He is a skilled manager and extremely knowledgeable in zoology," says Mr Harrison.

Mr Pillai has gone back to school a few times in his four decade-long career, gaining both zoo-specific qualifications, such as a Certificate in Animal Management from the City and Guilds of London, and more general ones, including a diploma in business administration from the National Productivity Board.

That was to be a springboard to a master's degree, but those studies were interrupted and put on indefinite hold in the early 1990s as work on the Night Safari took more of his time.

He enjoys photography and perhaps not surprisingly, favours shooting pictures of nature and wildlife.

On travels, both for work and on holiday with his family, he brings home plenty of snaps. Almost every year for the last two decades, he and a group of friends have done a pilgrim's tour around temples in south India.

"I've always felt at peace in temples. Being close to God brings me joy and peace," he says.

At age 62, he is officially retired, but continues as Wildlife Reserves' director of zoology at the management's request.

He has no date in mind for calling it quits and taking it easy, he says.

"I'll like to carry on for as long as I possibly can. I enjoy my work. I enjoy working with my colleagues and I want to contribute for as long as I can, making WRS a great place for animals and visitors."

johnlui@sph.com.sg

This article was first published on June 02, 2014.
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