A Sort Of Relief

Paradoxically I felt a strong sense of relief when I read last week about a guy I taught a few years back who's just received a twelve year jail sentence with twelve strokes of the cane in there for good measure. The relief stemmed from the fact that he could have been facing execution, so no matter how bad the outcome it couldn't have been as utterly devastating as that. He'd got himself involved in a gang killing in Geylang, over some drugs deal gone sour as far as I can make out, and it looks like some kind of justice has been done - though I'm not sure the family of the young man who got himself killed would see it like that.

It's probably not going to surprise anyone when I tell you he, the one going to prison, was a decent enough sort of student. Unfailingly polite but just a little bemused at having to put up with what must have seemed like the irrelevance of school. Me, for example, trying to teach him things about English that had little if anything to do with the worlds in which he moved. But he did what it was necessary to do in the classroom and, most importantly of all, stayed largely out of trouble even when it was clear enough that he'd be able to handle himself when he got into it.

Except that he wasn't able to handle himself in the end, because this kind of trouble can so easily escalate to the point that the forces of the state get themselves involved and a much bigger, realer, harsher world than the streets of Geylang takes control of your life. I can still see him sitting in my classroom, the middle of the second row at the back (where he could be trusted, as he was intent on staying out of trouble) and just getting on with doing what he needed to do to build some kind of life - one he's now thrown away.

And that's why I don't see what has happened as inevitable, despite the difficult background he was from. He had chances. There were other possibilities open to him. People were working to provide them for him, and he got the best advice and guidance he could have had. My old mate Deepak put a lot into his case, and you just don't get better help than that. In the end he made the wrong choices but the choices were real.

He's young though - which is one of the reasons all this is so sad. But it means he'll get out of clink still quite a young man. And I suppose there's some hope in that.