Born in Seremban, Kulasingam Sabaratnam was very enterprising. At the age of 11, during the Japanese occupation, he planted vegetables in tins and reared chicken at the back of the shophouse where our family lived. He would mop the house or massage mum’s legs to earn a few cents and race off to see a movie, sitting in the cheap front rows, later acting out Lone Ranger, Zorro, Tarzan etc. for me, his younger sister.
In his teens he earned $75 working in my father’s hardware shop in the afternoons. As such, when in 1949, a lorry bringing supplies from Kuala Lumpur arrived late one evening after the shop was closed, he had to help unload large glass canisters of nitric acid. One broke! Acid splashed on both his lower legs as he was in shorts! He ran the full length of the shop, screaming in agony.
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