Love is more than skin deep
A husband goes against all odds to make his wife’s dream come true
A technician is keeping his promise to help his wife achieve her dream.
KLANG: He promised the love of his life that he would make her dreams come true. And when a gas cylinder exploded in his face during an industrial accident, the first thought that came to air-conditioning technician S. Thirumurugan’s mind was if he would still be able to fulfil his promise to his wife Santhi Vadivel.
Thirumurugan, 32, had promised Santhi, 30, he would help her further her studies so that she could carve out a career as a veterinarian.
(Santhi could not pursue the course in Malaysia due to entry requirements as she had left school after completing her SPM.)
“He was burnt almost beyond recognition and was in great pain when I arrived at his side at the hospital.
“Just as they were taking him into the operating theatre, he looked at me with tears in his eyes and said he was unsure if he could still help me realise my dreams,” said Santhi, who is from Merbau Pulas, Kedah.
The couple, who lived and worked in Singapore at the time of the mishap on Aug 15, 2012, had just married five months earlier.
After 17 days in intensive care, two weeks in a regular ward and one-and-a-half years of follow-up treatment and physiotherapy, Thirumurugan restarted his efforts to make Santhi’s dream come true.
“By then he had left his job in Singapore and we moved to Johor Baru where he managed a car wash and drove Uber to support us,” said Santhi.
Finally, Thirumurugan found out from a Uber passenger, who was from Perth, that there were colleges in Australia where Santhi could first spend two years pursuing a certificate and then a diploma in Animal Science before moving on to veterinary school.
After working hard to save enough money to support both of them for a few years in Australia, Thirumurugan enrolled Santhi at the Tafe Western University in Perth and the couple moved there in August this year.
“I started classes on Aug 21 and my husband is also pursuing a sixmonth certificate course in air-con- ditioning and refrigeration maintenance at the same university,” said Santhi.
Meanwhile, Thirumurugan, who is from Bukit Karangan, Kedah, said he fell in love with Santhi the moment he spotted her at a temple function in his hometown.
“It was love at first sight for me and I knew from then itself that I wanted to spend the rest of my life with her,” said Thirumurugan, who proposed to Santhi on their first date.
Santhi accepted the proposal. She, too, had fallen head-over-heels in love with Thirumurugan on their first date because of “his charming ways and infectious laughter”.
She added that her love for Thirumurugan deepened when he told her it was important for him that Santhi develop her own identity instead of only being his wife and the mother of his children.
“My husband is my world because he made me his world.
“I love everything about him, including every inch of the burn scars on his body,” said Santhi.