While many celebrities keep mum about their personal lives, Singapore comedian Kumar has gone the extra mile — he’s kept a son away from the limelight for about 11 years.
The 54-year-old host revealed that his family also includes a 29-year-old adopted son in an interview with Our Grandfather Story published on Friday (July 7).
“I never imagined that someone would call me ‘Mummy’,” Kumar said. “I’m a very private person, very reserved, so people don’t know that I’m a parent to a boy who is 30 years old this year.”
Kumar shared that the son that he’s come to call his own is actually his friend’s younger brother, Sathin.
“He told me, ‘I fought with my father. Can I stay with you for a few days?’
“One night became 11 years,” Kumar recalled.
Sathin had anger issues that caused him to quarrel with his father, which led him to leave his home for good.
Although Sathin’s parents kept asking him to return home, the young man refused. Once, his mother went to Kumar’s house, looked at his living conditions and left, Kumar said.
“I told myself without asking her, ‘Okay, I think I’m a parent now.'”
Dealing with rage
But Sathin’s anger did flare up again and it took aim at Kumar, the latter recalled.
His adopted son didn’t return home one night, so Kumar confronted him and asked for the reason behind his actions.
Sathin didn’t take kindly to this and “threatened” him, Kumar said, but he eventually found out why Sathin was away.
“He replied, ‘My house has no PlayStation 4’. So I ran to the shopping mall to get a PlayStation 4.
“Then he came back immediately, and you could see the glow on my face.”
Kumar also brought Sathin to meet ex-convicts to set him straight, the latter shared.
“Sometimes we do see fights and all, and she (Kumar) said, ‘You see, you want to be there? Do you want to be like them?'” Sathin recounted, adding that this taught him that he ought to control himself and his emotions, lest he ends up behind bars.
Friends ask: Have you touched him?
However, public perception of his relationship with Sathin hasn’t always been positive — even among those that Kumar would have called friends.
“I had friends who asked me before, ‘Have you touched him?’,” he shared.
“I said, ‘What do you mean?’ Is it because I’m gay? Like, I would touch him for —”
Visibly upset while recalling this encounter, Kumar cut himself off and shared with the interviewers that he told his friend to “get out” afterwards.
“I can’t have friends who can’t understand,” he said.
“Just because we’re gay doesn’t mean that we would touch whoever we are parenting differently.”
I could see myself in him: Kumar
Kumar also recounted how he was abused as a child by his father because “the only thing that reminded him of the failed marriage were the kids”.
Contemplating his past, Kumar said: “If someone were there to help me when I was younger, I would not have been so helpless.
“So when Sathin came to my house, I thought I could see myself in him.”
Despite his father’s abusive tendencies in the past, Kumar forgave him — although he regrets being unable to convey those words to his father before the latter died from cancer.
Family is one of Kumar’s key priorities today, and he spends quality time with his siblings and Sathin.
“I never dreamed of being a parent, so I was very surprised that I can actually give someone so much love, you know?
“I think people need to learn that nothing beats a family connection.”
This article was first published on AsiaOne and republished on theAsianparent with permission.
