SINGAPORE — Mr Karthigayan Ramakrishnan barely escaped with his life when a Taiwanese fighter jet crashed into the storeroom that he was in during National Service training on that island six years ago. Burns covered 45 per cent of his body and he spent almost 60 days in hospital, “walking the line” between life and death.

Yesterday, in a clear testimony to how far he has recovered, the 29-year-old was among five Singaporeans awarded the prestigious Chevening Scholarship by the United Kingdom government. Known previously in Singapore as the Raffles Scholarships, the programme offers bond-free scholarships to promising young Singaporeans.

Mr Karthigayan, who will be the very first Chevening-British Alumni scholar, said the scholarship came as “a real boost”. “It will drive me to do even better,” he added.

The scholarship, funded by the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office, will help to pay for his master’s degree in public policy at Sheffield University.

Explaining his choice of study, Mr Karthigayan, a sociology graduate from UniSIM, said: “When I was doing sociology, I realised that it is public policy and governance that affects every part of daily life … If you want to be part of the change, you have to be part of (it).”

Mr Karthigayan, who is currently a senior executive of student affairs at NUS’ Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, has also been working actively to inspire other burn victims through the Singapore General Hospital’s burns support team.

“When you are a burn victim, your features change. Sometimes there is skin discolouration or celluloid, but when we meet each other, we reinforce to one another that life goes on. The kind of message we want to give is to accept it first. Coping happens later,” he said.

Indeed, Mr Karthigayan’s recovery from the May 2007 crash, which killed three Singaporean soldiers and two Taiwanese pilots, has been fraught with much pain and difficulty, although it has influenced the way he views life.

“The accident reinforced one thing for me, that life was fragile. There is only this limited time that I have to do what I want to do ... So that’s what I keep telling myself every day — to make the best out of everything,” said Mr Karthigayan, who got married earlier this year.