'Retired' at 32, ex-scholar refuses to be 'a slave to the grind'

Up until earlier this year, Ashish Kumar ticked all the boxes one might associate with success in Singapore.

He was among the top scorers for his year’s Primary School Leaving Examination cohort, clinched the Public Service Commission scholarship to pursue a law degree at the University of Cambridge and held posts in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) and Ministry of Communications and Information.

But after completing his six-year scholarship bond, Ashish, 32, had little apprehension about going into “early retirement”.

Thanks to savings and some savvy investments, the Singaporean bachelor is more than content to limit his expenses to just $2,500 a month while working 10 hours a week as a debate coach for his alma mater Raffles Institution.

“I think of it as getting out of the system and taking back control,” Ashish explains. 

He adds: “As far as I remember, I’ve never been interested in conventional metrics of success, like wealth or leadership. Fundamentally, I have always been a creative person, and I think that’s what really motivates me.”

At the age of 14, Ashish, whose father is Indian and mother Chinese, got into debating “by accident”. 

“I was very noisy in class. And my teacher said you are very noisy, you should join the debate club. I was like, oh, there’s a debate club? You can do a CCA by just arguing with people? Now that sounds easy,” he recalls.  

“So I joined and found out it was actually very difficult. You need to know a lot of difficult things as well.” 

Nonetheless, his passion for debate blossomed, and he went on to earn an unusually successful track record in the world of competitive debate in schools. At 19, he clinched the top prize at the World Schools Debating Championship in 2011, when he represented Singapore in the finals in Scotland. He also won the best speaker prize at the 2015 World University Debating Championship in Malaysia, where he represented the University of Cambridge.

When I met Ashish, his unique, contrarian personality was on display as we spoke about popular culture, his family and life in general as he sees it.

He listens to classical music and enjoys sci-fi novels, but rues how badly the genre is often written: “I tried reading the 3 Body Problem and after two pages, I felt physically sick from the writing."

He cites the dystopian thriller Civil War as a movie he enjoyed recently, but laments at how pretentious Christopher Nolan’s films have become since Memento. 

A typical day in his life involves strolling from his four-room flat in Woodlands to Causeway Point for his morning coffee, spending his afternoons writing or playing badminton and coaching debate classes or meeting friends in the evenings.

He limits his spending by eating at hawker centres or couchsurfing at friends’ homes when he travels. Part of his income also goes towards paying his parents a sum equivalent to rent for the room he occupies.

“It’s very possible to live cheap in Singapore, especially when you take cars and housing out of the equation. I’ve never been very interested in luxury items and the finer things in life.”

Ashish admits that he knew being a slave to the grind was not something he could ever embrace or tolerate – even when he accepted his scholarship. 

“When I started working, I told myself to see how all of this would work out. And I did actually love my last few postings (especially his overseas stint in Brunei while with the MFA). But I’m just not a person for regimentation. And I hate being bored. So if something is boring, I just wouldn’t do it,” he says. 

“And then I thought, am I supposed to spend 40 years of my life waking up at nine and working till five? It seemed unthinkable as a way to go about living.”

He believes it is unlikely he will return to full-time paid work. He says his new lifestyle means no longer getting out of bed to pen e-mails he does not want to or attend meetings he sees as pointless. Instead, he is focused on trying to publish a novel and learning how to ride a motorcycle.

Though he doesn’t see his choices as a reflection of the youth mindset in today’s society, Ashish says he would push back on the notion that he’s paving a path for anyone. “My circumstances are unusual. I do hope, though, that how I’m living can help people think about what they actually want at the end of the day.” 

His parents, he says, are “totally fine” with his choices. 

His father works at a Christian missionary organisation and his mother is a primary school teacher. Ashish also has a younger sister who is 29. 

When I ask him about marriage and becoming a parent himself, Ashish tells me he identifies as aromantic and asexual. “I have never experienced either a romantic or sexual attraction for any animal, vegetable or mineral,” he adds. 

“It’s incredibly fortunate because it imposes such vast costs on your emotions, time and money. So for me, it just frees up a lot of time and emotional bandwidth to deal with other things in life.” 

Will he regret this all one day?

Almost 100 per cent no, he states emphatically. 

“Let me put it this way. Everyone is working an ordinary job and living a conventional life, and I think they’re more likely to regret (their choices) compared to me. So it’s weird that people ask me this question but don’t ask everyone else the same thing.”