A death in the family

Beyond a lurid tale lies a journey of loss and grief touched by kindness, to lay a wandering spirit to rest.

By Neo Xiaobin

IT LOOKED like another lurid tale from the seamier side of Singapore life - the naked body of a beautiful Chinese karaoke lounge hostess found floating in the pool of a posh Sentosa bungalow owned by a wealthy real estate tycoon.

Most of the squalid details were there. It does not take much imagination to fill in the rest, nor much time for the sniggering to start. Village girl from China turned hostess in Singapore to make a quick buck, comes to grief. Morality tales do not come much clearer than that.

But look a bit harder behind the scandal headlines and a different, more complex and distressing tale emerges.

It is one of an impoverished family, bereaved and bewildered by a tragedy they can hardly comprehend, who sell everything they own to make a desperate journey to Singapore to bring home their daughter's body.

It is also a tale of Third World ambition coming up hard against the harsher, unforgiving realities of life in a rich country and a tale - there is some good out of all of this - of what the kindness of strangers can achieve.

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