Located on the west side of Singapore, Tengah was once occupied by vast rubber plantations before becoming a military training ground.

Then, in 2016, the Singapore Housing Development Board announced plans to transform Tengah into its 24th public housing community. One of its five housing districts was later christened ‘Plantation’. Its neighbourhood centre is the Plantation Plaza, and it is here, on the elevated walkway overlooked by scores of high-rise social housing, that a certain M. Shah hones his kickboxing drills in the middle of the night. He does this to accommodate his preferred sportswear – a head-to-toe rubber suit – with some privacy and cooler temperatures.

One evening, a few weeks before his fighting debut in February 2025, M. Shah invited Bart’s crew to witness his training regimen and to make a case for his unusual gymwear. His key argument is a blend of the mystical principles of sympathetic magic and the science of combat physiology. Taking his ritual beliefs a step further, he requested for the camera crew to film his training regime in reverse, before correcting it in post by rewinding the tape. "I pray that by reversing and warping time in a place like Plantation Plaza," he explains, "it will allow me to summon Tengah’s rubber past, bring us in contact with the spirit of rubber, and charge me with rubber’s power. LFG.”