I was one of the few given the honours on Selva's funeral to say a few words in his eulogy but alas was too nervous to say more than I wanted to . I was to represent his friends at KE Hall at Kent Ridge while Selva was a resident for a year. There was only time for some eulogies to be said, there were some whom I believe who would have like to say something but not being comfortable public speakers was unable to do so ,some overwhelmed with emotion , and many more whom the print media would be more appropriate. (On this note , his bosom buddy , Indren, will be publishing a book of remembrance of Selva later on where he would be collating parts of Selva's life chronologically for all his friends to see the whole person that he was.) Later in the night when I had time to reflect on what and how I should have said on his eulogy, my wife Pat(she and Selva has a mutual fondness for each other because of similar interests in music and books, and the saturday dinner conversations which he would have with us just after going to the temple and before going to WongSans, the pub ) gave me some ideas. The way I would have like to say it would have been:
" Selva, Selva, Selva. Who is Selva and what is it about Selva that has endeared him to so many people in his life that on his funeral so many had flown from such faraway places like London, Australia, Japan , Hong Kong and so on just to be at his funeral to say their last goodbyes. At this point , the Selva that I know , if he was standing next to me would either smile and burst into laughter (especially when he has a glass of beer in his hand) because he would be so uncomfortable of the impending avalanche of compliments that would fall
his way. And the next person to him would then be smiling and laughing if Selva did, and the next , and soon the group of people around him would burst into laughter as well. And that is the sort of person he is.
Somehow he has the god given ability of infecting people with laughter and feeling good about themselves. And before you can pay any of the compliments to him, he would say, "hey, come on , come on, don't , please don't, you're embarassing me". That is Selva, unassuming , self-effacing, exceedingly modest and humble . Although I knew Selva in the hostel for just one year, we became better friends after he left the hostel. Our friendship picked up when our paths crossed again when he came into the financial world where I was in. That's when our rituals of saturday evenings dinner , sandwiched between his temple prayers and pub crawling, started. He was always entertaining with his wit, charm, politeness and he would share with us what he read,thought and experienced. Pat(my wife) and Selva, would then share about the new books,movies,music CDs with each other that they have come across and then they would go into this esoteric and passionate discussion with me staring blurringly. When that stage of the dinner is over , I would jump in again to ribbed and tease him about his social life, his drinking haunts, girl friends, work and the financial markets. Selva would mention names of people whom he met and work with, and had tremendous respect for. He would say "such and such is a damn solid guy, wah.. damn solid , damn solid". (solid is a local slang for gifted,intelligent,capable, talented,brilliant etc. some of whom I finally met at his funeral, Kulidren, Ayub,Selva,GerGhee, Chris Kuan and many more).And that he learnt alot from his boss, or that guy whom he met was really interesting and so on. He always kept an open mind and was willing to listen. I think his unspoken philosophy was that one would learn more by listening than speaking.
Finally he left for London, and our saturday evenings has never been the same. Alas we had to pass the wonderful experience of Selva for the people in London to enjoy. Being the person he was, once in a while though , we would still get a call in the wee mornings (seems like alot of people in this time zone did) from him just to touch base with us. And now there won't be this endearing voice, laughing, calling us to interrupt us up in our sleep, sadly that would be missed.
Selva will be greatly missed but forever remembered ."
CHANG WEI MENG
