When Madam Urmila Nandey returned home to Ceylon Road last night, after a long day that included her late husband’s funeral, the first thing she did was to check on their long-time driver Rahim.
She wanted to make sure he had had his dinner.
At the state funeral earlier, the woman who made Mr SR Nathan’s “imagination run wild” – as he himself put it – for 74 years was a picture of grace and calm.
The 87-year-old – who uses a wheelchair and whose hair is now the colour of snow – would have been exhausted from both sorrow and the task of receiving the many visitors who went to pay their last respects.
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But she did what she has been doing the last six decades as Mr Nathan’s wife: her duty, and more.
She waved to the funeral attendees who spontaneously rose to their feet as she was wheeled into the University Cultural Centre auditorium. She nodded in thanks as speaker after speaker – from the Prime Minister to the family friend – paid tribute to Mr Nathan.
And at the end, she clasped her hands together in gratitude to those present, lifting them up to acknowledge the folk sitting in the upper decks of the hall.
This is the woman who has been hailed as the anchor for Singapore’s sixth president.
As Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong put it, in the most poignant line in his eulogy for Mr Nathan: “The central and brightest thread in his life was his love for Umi.”
Strip away the pomp of yesterday’s ceremony, and the theme that emerged was love.
Read also: Singapore says goodbye to former President S R Nathan
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There was Mr Nathan’s love for his country and its people, Tamil and Malayalam movies, classical Carnatic music and light film songs, and writing letters with a $2.20 black-ink pen.
There was also his love for his family. “He was above all a family man,” said veteran diplomat Gopinath Pillai.
In particular, the bond between Mr and Mrs Nathan was “an extraordinary tale of devotion and love that inspires us all”.
Mr Nathan himself has written and said much about Mrs Nathan, dedicating chapters in his books to how they met. He was 18 and, like in a sepia-tinted movie, he fell in love when he cycled past her house in Muar and glimpsed her standing by the window on the second floor.
This article was first published on August 27, 2016.
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