Singaporean duo bring to life untold stories of Little India riot
On the night of 8 December 2013, 24-year-old Mohamed Usman looked down from the window grilles of his Kinta Road apartment and saw not the scene of a riot, but a Singaporean-style commotion.
“An old man was arguing with the riot police,” he said. “Immediately, I knew he was Singaporean,” he added, noting the arguments that the elderly cyclist brought forward in favour of him being allowed to pass by on Race Course Road — "This is a free society, I am a Singapore citizen", for instance.
It was a moment of humour amid the wreckage that the Little India Riot had left behind in the immediate vicinity, and it is accounts such as this that photographer Zakaria Zainal and journalism student Prabhu Silvam are collecting for a project called “Riot Recollections”.
With 24-year-old Prabhu speaking to interview subjects and writing short blurbs based on their accounts, and 29-year-old Zakaria taking their accompanying pictures, the pair have been working on the ground-up independent project since the weekend after the riot. The project has so far culminated into an online collection of 20 individual portraits and stories.
With Zakaria juggling full-time work as a photographer and educator, the pair had ventured out almost every weekend over the past two months, approaching anyone they came across to ask if they were there during the riot, and what they saw that night.
The resulting stories presented are deliberately kept short, in view of an audience with an ever-decreasing attention span, said Zakaria.
“We want to reach out to a large audience, and anecdotal stories are quite strong in that sense,” he told Yahoo Singapore in an interview.
Missing stories
The inspiration to do this came to him just a day after the riot occurred — the live action of which he rues that he missed after falling asleep early that Sunday night.
Walking around the shops in Little India the next day with friend, he was asking himself what he could do, when he realised there must have been many people whose perspectives of what had happened had not yet been told.
“What were some of the other stories that couldn’t make it to print, were not newsworthy enough, or that the government didn’t want to say, or they said it but framed it in a certain way? It was just that idea — someone saw something that no one else saw,” he said.
He then contacted Prabhu, who agreed to join him, and took the lead in approaching and speaking to people in the area, particularly because he was fluent in Tamil.
“We started off with the idea that we were doing this as a project by the common man, for the common man, and there was no intention to harm anyone or deface anyone’s reputation,” said Prabhu. “We just wanted to go in, say it as it is and get out — that’s about it.”
The project’s website is so far being funded from Zakaria’s pocket, and the two aim to compile at least 50 stories and pictures from people who were there or were involved with the riot in one way or another — they have so far spoken to and photographed 25 people. They are still looking for more candidates.
“It’s a very ground-up initiative; we decided we wanted to do something that people can remember at the documentary level,” he said.
Were you present at or near the scene of the riot when it happened, and would like to tell your story? Contact Zakaria and Prabhu here.
