Where in the world is Mas Selamat?

I am very disturbed by the Mas Selamat case. It does not make sense for a man to have disappeared into thin air. Even if he has a huge underground cavern or has escaped to Malaysia, it cannot be that no-one has seen him doing that after he was found missing.

Even the vigilant lions couldn't get him. So where in the world is Mas Selamat?

Well I was striving for an answer, and it came in the most unlikely form: an old Puffin classic by Robert Louis Stevenson: Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde.

So a little book review for the uninitiated. Dr Jekyll is one who believes in the two-ness of man, speaking of which maybe I should say "Dr Jekyll is TWO who believes in the two-ness of man." Because Dr Jekyll is not actually one, but two.

Anyway the name Jekyll already sounds pretty suspicious. If you were to dissect his name into "je" and "kyll" - "je" being the translation of "I" in French, and "kyll" being a misspelling off the word "kill". Put together: I kill.

Looks like Mr Hyde isn't quite disinclined to do that. Anyway Dr Jekyll believes that there are two sides to a man so he concocts a potion and he becomes another man. I bloody wish I'm able to do that. Imagine how powerful that is.

Still at the end of the day it's a story. And we all know experiments more often end up in failure than in success. Should the two-ness of men and Dr Jekyll's secret recipe really exist, then that AWOL personnel from 42 SAR would have never been found and returned to DB.

Like how Mr Hyde could get away with his crimes, perhaps that is the case with Mas Selamat. He could be among us, he could be anyone around above suspicion. That is the scary bit. And while at first you might be able to get a clue about Mas Selamat, now that he's totally missing there's no telling who was him or who he was.

Sounds confusing?

Well maybe your father was missing during one of their plots. Or maybe while Mas Selamat was in jail you didn't see your best friend at all. Very suspicious. Now that he's totally gone there's nothing to compare with and nothing to assure yourself that you could be right next to him.

Be afraid, be very afraid.

But there is a good side to it. As Dr Jekyll found himself unable to resist turning to Mr Hyde when he ran out of the salt to concoct his brew, maybe Mas Selamat also can't find his solution to turn him back into the evil man that he is.

Oh well, for every action there must be an equal reaction from the opposite direction. Thus for one good man that has turned into a bad man irreversibly, there is a bad man who has turned into a good man irreversibly.

That man is Mas Selamat. Elementary, my dear Watson.