Towards the end of 2009, while I was on a writers’ festival abroad, I had an email from a foreign journalist who made the most shocking request: ‘I am working on an obituary for Mr Lee Kuan Yew, and I would be grateful if you could help me…’

My first thought was: ‘Has something happened to Minister Mentor that I do not know about?’ But no, MM being a world statesman, any serious illness, accident, etc would have made world news which I followed regularly in my hotel room. Whatever reason the journalist had, it could not reduce the shock at the inappropriateness, to say the least, of the request, so I immediately emailed back to say No.

But the incident, small though it was, had tapped the innermost core of all those feelings of profound discomfort connected with the breaking of a taboo, a condition known as ‘pun-tung’ (the Hokkien variant of the Malay word). And the most fearful taboo is the one connected with death.

No amount of western education or liberalization can eradicate the ‘pun-tung’ that Asians experience when the death of a person is referred to while he or she is still alive. Indeed, the very mention is construed as a wish for the death to take place, and is hence tantamount to a curse, the most toxic human speech act.

I have since realized that the journalist’s request was probably driven by no more than intense media competition where everyone works frenziedly to be ahead of the news. To come out with a substantial article of a world statesman (and a controversial one at that) upon the instant of his demise, would be a real scoop. MM, though in good health, is already in his eighties, and is probably not the only ageing world figure for whom this zealous journalist is preparing an obituary article.

I had read about a tabloid getting ready a similar piece on Britney Spears during the period when her life was fast unraveling, with her increasingly bizarre behaviour. She was not even allowed custody of her children and had to be under constant medical supervision. The tabloid must have been waiting for what they expected to be the final outcome—a tragic death by suicide or a drug overdose. It turned out that Britney Spears managed to make a full recovery, so the obituary must have been discarded (or recycled to serve for other young superstars living dangerously?)

Any obituary-in-waiting has such a vulture-ish quality about it, and is so deeply offensive to human decency, that even journalistic excess should have no place for it.

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A continuing flow of little, readable pieces that will constitute what I feel is an important 'legacy of values' to leave behind. Read more about Vignettes...