MGG Pillai
MGG Pillai
an obituary
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MGG Pillai
MGG Pillai
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| PISTOL:
Why, then the world's mine oyster. Which I with sword will open. I DO NOT REMEMBER when I first met Gangga Pillai, the immortal creator of "Bolehland". Perhaps it was at the Lodge Hotel, KL, where he had impressed me with his enormous appetite. I had been long familiar with the name in the pages of the London Times, often wondering whether the excellent stringer was from Kuala Lumpur. The school he went to, the Johore English College, had taught him well. The name cropped up again when I was having satay with a group of early law graduates from Singapore U who included Dato Wong Soon Foh, Lim Pooi Yin and M Sivalingam. They told me that MGG Pillai had attended lectures for two years but dropped out when he found law not interesting enough. Journalism beckoned, drawing him like an irresistible magnet. He was to become a regular contributor to the Far Eastern Economic Review, senior sub editor of the ill-fated Singapore Herald and expelled from Singapore when Lee Kuan Yew closed down the paper. "I had thought", he was to write, "and one of the reasons for which I was banned from Singapore, that Singapore would take Johore." He was Reuter's correspondent covering the American invasion and occupation of Vietnam. ("I have worked for Reuters, and I could not write a story until a Western embassy confirmed it'" he wrote). In 1977 he was elected a Nieman Fellow of the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard. On retirement, if such a thing was possible for the man, he started the Sangkancil discussion group on the internet which quickly gathered a readership of 2,500. When some of the contributors resorted to abuse, he refused to close the door to them; one had to accept the level of argument prevailing in this country, he would not brook censorship. His fans increased enormously when the PAS paper, "Harakah", its circulation vastly swollen in the Anwar blackeye backlash, offered him a column. He was also a correspendont for an Indian newspaper. Foreign journalists, on rare visits to this country, turned to him for advice and contacts. MGG, as he was popularly known, was a fearless fellow and like all genuinely brave people he was modestly unassuming and soft spoken. Though at the pinnacle of his profession, he was not prima donna touchy about his writing. Some writers are supersensitive and resent even the slightest criticism of their use of words but not him. When I admonished him for using the word "King" to misdescribe the Yang Di Pertuan Agong, he humbly accepted the correction. |
| He was a hard boiled journalist
and never took people at their face value. He thought the opposition
woolly headed; nor did he have a high opinion of their leaders, one of
whom he unceremoniously placed in the category of court jesters..
And he was absolutely reliable. Although his commentaries were highly critical of the government he was trusted by all, whethe rministers, former ministers, MBs or mere politicians, because they knew he could be relied on not to breach a confidence. And he was to discover friends in strange places. Once, when his system broke down for three days, he rang one high up in the Telekoms to ask if it was the Special Branch. "Not to worry", he was told, "We have been instructed to see that your internet does not fail". A minister confided that the PM was a loyal reader because he was surrounded by flatterers and only got the news from "that fellow Pillai." I do not doubt this story because, towards the last days of the Mahathir administration, MGG was at a bookstore in KL when someone tapped him on the shoulder; it was Dr M who invited him for a cup of coffee. I wonder what was said between them in that one hour of coffee. He never told me. If it did not involve a confidence, MGG never let a story die. If it was fit to print he published it. And he damned the consequences. Among other things he revealed that the appeals court president Eusoff Chin had spent a holiday with a young lawyer regularly appearing in his court. His reliable and penetrating exposure of wrongdoings exposed him to the cold winds of our anti-free speech defamation law, copied from the British. The powerful businessman Tan Sri Vincent Tan sued him and won RM2 million damages, an astronomical sum, which even the Singapore courts have not reached . His appeal, postponed again and again, was still pending when he died. MGG gave two talks in Penang, but the attendances showed that few in closed-door, parochial Penang were aware of the existence of the great journalist. Journalism is not a paying proposition. Gangga Pillai lived a simple life in extremely humble circumstances. And it was a risky business. Once, someone close to the present government even threatened to break every bone in his body. The reply was typical of this insouciant reporter: My bones have been broken a thousand and more times and one more time wouldn't do any harm. Cheeky! Lim Kean Chye |
| ______ INDEX Point to the article that you want to read, and CLICK Index page Baba
sayings Book Review Food
guide The jungle war (6) Letter from Pulau Tikus MGG Pillai The people's constitution (6) Women's Centre for Change |
| ____________________ The Penang File Issue 47 |