* By Philip George and Geetha K.

MY father hadn’t spent the majority of his savings on his only daughter’s marriage for her to be at the receiving end of a man’s temper and violence. Growing up, I’d had enough exposure to know what the toxic combination of alcohol and prejudicial social customs was capable of in Indian societies, and it hurt to see my educated sister unable to assert herself. I only returned to England without harming my sister’s abuser because Shanta confessed she felt there was still hope of reconciliation. It would take a few more years of suffering before she would get a divorce, at the core of which, I suspect, was her fear of stigma.

In quick succession, I had to rework my diary once again for a trip to Kerala at Mummy’s request and also because I wanted to check on her and Viji. I was taken aback by my brother’s transformation in just a matter of months… hair grown out and spotting a fiercely lush moustache. I was even more gobsmacked by Mummy’s manoeuvre at ensuring my trip was not wasted. My sullied reputation notwithstanding, she made me part of the selection panel to preside over “interviews” of potential brides for Viji, the only one of my siblings still unmarried. 

The panel comprising family elders and Mummy operated with the steadfast confidence of acting in the best interest of all concerned. Thankfully, Viji exercised his freedom to make the final decision. Marriage fixed, I fled to my sanctuary and busy schedule.

Back in Lancaster, I was elated to discover my efforts at pulling strings to book the elusive Golf Rallye GTI was successful. Volkswagen released only fifty in the UK in 1995 and I had to have one! I took Geoffrey on a final spin in my still-new BMW before surrendering it to its next owner and then went off to view Volkswagon’s latest model at a showroom in London. It was a moment to relish. A dream new car, no longer hampered by family obligations and a realisation solitude was becoming an essential ingredient of my life. I enjoyed being alone; better yet, it contributed to my productivity and general well-being. I was by no means withdrawing from my hectic work schedule or social life, it just felt like I was on the right vector – confidence granted me by my next marathon. 

To take it a notch higher from the sea-level London Marathon, I decided to attempt the iconic Snowdonia Marathon in Wales encircling Britain’s highest mountain, its dramatic routes regarded as one of the toughest to complete. I arrived in Snowdon with two friends to spend the night at the Bron Menai, a cracking bed and breakfast surrounded by wilderness and big rolling hills tucked in the outskirts of Caernarfon. By the time I hit the sack after a light meal I’d heard the local legend associated with nearby Beddgelert… of Prince Llywelyn who accidentally killed his beloved dog Gelert thinking it had killed his baby son, when in fact the blood on Gelert’s muzzle was from killing the wolf attempting to eat his baby. The stones marking the place where valiant Gelert was buried had become a popular visiting site.

Morning dawned with miserable weather and I was a bundle of nerves thinking about the challenges of the Snowdon massif. When the race got underway we were already soaking through in heavy rains and high winds blinding views of the surrounding slate mountains. The climb up the steep Llanberis pass was smooth and I overtook runners with ease, getting into a rhythm right up to the first descent when the trails became slippery. “Weather like this, best to run as quickly as possible,” cried a fellow runner sporting a 100 Marathon Club t-shirt, just past Beddgelert village. I picked up speed and made it through the halfway point in one hour and 39 minutes, looking good for my target of finishing the course in four hours and 30 minutes. 

There were other chats and pauses along the way which was a complete departure from road marathons lined with cheering crowds where your focus was purely on the race. Snowdonia allowed moments for appreciating its spectacular scenery or breathing its crisp mountain air which many of us did as we ran, walked or hobbled. At mile 22, the incessant bad weather, ascents and descents caught up with me and I was left dragging my knackered legs. 

Knowing it was the last chunk of the race, I followed a simple strategy: pick a post in the distance, make a run for it then slow down to a power walk before starting all over again. My body adapted. After what seemed like an age, I made it to mile twenty-four, where the forbidding final descent awaited. Nudging past a couple of runners I missed my footing in the mud, completely lost control and tumbled down the hill. Taking no notice of my internal pain and ballooning right knee, I picked myself up and crossed the line in four hours and 15 minutes. 

My chip time (net time in marathon language) moved me down to four hours 10 minutes and 41 seconds. That solitary Snowdon Marathon became a life-changing experience, sparking an enduring love for mountains and uphill running, which remains my daily pursuit. 

I still run against the wind, no longer as young, no longer as strong, but it would be remiss of me not to mention how punishingly hard it is especially at my age now, far from enjoyable and sometimes the demons in my head badger me to give up. ‘Take it easy. Go into retirement. You deserve a break,’ they prod. But, I’ve kept on, never missing my date with nature and always embracing the elements, albeit I do take it easy. I no longer run with a watch. I don’t care about pace, strides, cadence or heart rate. Neither do I worry about conditions, although proper attire and shoes that give the best traction are very important. If anything, I find running on inches of snow, in icy conditions, through a blizzard or just feeling the earth under my feet, to be quite stimulating. 

Following the London and Snowdon marathons, my spirit pointed me in the direction of the Big Apple. Through my contacts in the New York Road Runners Club, I secured a gold dust place among its forty thousand runners. Amid central Manhattan’s total carnival atmosphere, I joined runners from all over the world to collect our vest numbers and numbered rucksacks at various designated gates. I struck up a friendship with Eduardo from Tuscany, as we were in the same pan. We did a walkabout around the city and over a pasta dinner exchanged notes on Italy and the Far East. The next morning, I met Eduardo at the pickup point where a bus took us from Manhattan to Staten Island via New Jersey. We joined the thousands of other runners in our pen at the start line in affluent Staten Island overlooking the stately Twin Towers, home of stockbrokers and city professionals who gave us a rousing send-off. Just as I crossed the bridge into Brooklyn, my leg began to hurt. I became very disturbed thinking of my throbbing four-time-operated-on right knee. Mr Bollen’s warning “stop running, your knee looks like a battlefield” kept creeping into my thoughts as I felt my knee flaring up.

I completed New York’s five boroughs in four hours and 44 minutes – way below my target of 3 hours. It was my slowest timing and by far the most painful race. Eduardo was waiting for me to collect our medals together, after which we compared notes with other new friends and I left New York the following day in severe pain from my ripe, swollen knee. 

Under the glare of walls adorned with autographed photographs of celebrity footballers, Mr Bollen gave me an earful. The arthroscopy was no good and the sports injury specialist performed the fifth and last operation on my damaged knee. Still in his operating gown, Mr Bollen marched towards me once I came round. 

“F****ing hell Phil, I’ve never seen anything like this! Why didn’t you stop when the pain began? You just made my job really difficult.” I was taken aback to hear the good doctor swear but perked up when he walked away scolding, “Take up cycling if you must!” That was exactly what I did – gave running a break for a fling with cycling. 

My partners at the firm weren’t disturbed by my “recklessness” as I never shirked my responsibilities. I have worked from the hospital bed (staff bringing my files in large Ikea bags, taking dictations to the amusement of nurses), or gone to the office on crutches after discharging myself against medical advice, often to conduct recovery with my own style of physiotherapy which has worked, as would be ascertained by Mr Bollen in his final medical assessment of my knee sixteen years after that fifth operation, ‘... he’s had a remarkably good time since then (last operation) with a high level of activity and minimal symptoms. On examination, his knee still looks like a battlefield with a slight fixed flexion deformity but remains relatively stable…’

As one who enjoyed being on the cutting edge of things, I was never parked in the office for long. I made the most of night school and professional courses, such as the groundbreaking Association of Personal Injury Lawyers’ course on repetitive strain injury following the Disability Discrimination Act 1995 (replaced by the Equality Act 2010) prohibiting disability discrimination in employment and other fields, in line with the rest of Europe. Such courses attracted industry experts, whose contacts came in most useful as I relied on their services to demonstrate compelling evidence when taking on tricky RSI cases which were beginning to pile up as people realised they could seek legal recourse against employers. 

To keep up with technological advancements I attended courses such as Computing for the Terrified because my staff were running circles around me! I shared a wonderful work friendship with my team of staff, always catching up outside of work hours, over meals or discussing current affairs. Having formed a tight bond, it must have been awkward for some to appreciate the change in the dynamics, with me now of boss rank. The shift in roles meant I was encouraged to remove my pseudo-Englishman cloak. I worried less about how I might be perceived and became more comfortable with discussing the East, sometimes, against the decadence of the West. This did not always go down well, like the time my legal cashier snapped testily, “Why don’t you go back to where you came from?”… a manner she would not have dared to use against Tony, Charles or Geoffrey. Why? 

The insinuation was pretty much today’s Brexit statement: You come here, take our education and benefits, our pensions, health system, social security, our women (in my case), our hospitality boxes, and now you reject us?!

I deflected the topic with the staff who “challenged” me as there were others about, all fed with the same, white-washed history. There had been too much triumphalist conditioning to make them understand much of Britain’s wealth and status could be tracked to the “homes” they now flippantly order non-white people to return to … the very “homes” the empire scrambled to, to violate and enrich itself.

At an appropriate time, I called the staff in question to my office for a disciplinary meeting in the presence of my assistant as a contemporary note taker while I gave her a lecture on office decorum with an injection of the deep injustices caused by not knowing one’s history. Everything was noted in her employment file as the issuance of a first warning.

My political views have stayed with me. If anything, I feel the situation in England has only worsened. Despite awareness that societies can no longer live in homogeneous bubbles, and even with the much-changed demographic makeup of the country, conversations imperative to curb the rise of intolerance, xenophobia and radicalism in the face of misplaced patriotism, continue to evade England. But the motivation for change cannot be forced. It has to come from within, as Germany has done with the holocaust. England’s voice of education will remain lacking for as long as the nanny-raised, napkin-wearing classes, mostly benefactors of the slave trade and empire, maintain power in their grip through closing ranks.

Following the New York marathon, it was a rough few months of pain, stiffness and lack of mobility for me. In some measure, regular visits to the gym helped my muscles get stronger and heal faster – the cue for me to take up serious cycling. I invested in a top-of-the-range hybrid Trek bicycle… a far cry from the minimalist, clean-cut ones of my boyhood. Not satisfied with cycling in my vicinity, I got in touch with a cycling adventure company in London and found out about an expedition in Vietnam, thanks in some ways to America. As a reconciliation measure, President Clinton had lifted an almost two-decade trade embargo with Vietnam post the war, easing entry into the country. What a way to kill two birds with one stone: improving my wonky knee’s fitness and cycling to get the true feeling of the country. 

In anticipation of the gruelling two-week schedule, I decided to pamper myself by putting up in a plush Chelsea hotel the day before leaving for Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City) and having dinner at the Indian fine dining restaurant Chutney Mary, in Kings Road. The dinner turned out to be an event in itself as the only two other diners at Chutney Mary’s Conservatory were Britain’s show business luminaries Peter Ustinov and Sean Connery. I’d already had the pleasure of listening to Ustinov’s stirring speech a few years prior at a gala tribute dinner to tennis great Arthur Ashe in Grosvenor House. I told Ustinov as much, to which 007 added his affirmation of his friend’s oratorical talent. What a diary entry that was for the Kajang boy who grew up watching Spartacus and James Bond in absolute awe, in an era when going to the cinema was a big affair warranting dressing up! 

Sixteen cyclists met in Ho Chi Minh City, 11 from England, the others from New Zealand, America and Holland. Twelve were females. The entourage was met by locals from the organising team who took us into the city, aptly a city of two-wheelers. To my eye, it was a magnified Kajang of the 1960s, and it put me in my element! Like an athlete ogling state-of-the-art equipment, I was thrilled to finally be in the small nation that defeated the big superpower, a topic I took up with my first friend, American Danielle Smith. Ho Chi Minh City was chock-a-block with weary-looking low rises, stalls and vendors selling an astonishing array of things jostling out of dull-looking high street shops, crowds in traditional attires and distinctive conical straw hats bustling on bicycles, motorbikes and three-wheeled bicycle taxis ... Vietnam was no longer in economic decline and was on the reconstruction path after defeating America and fighting a further two wars; ending Pol Pot’s genocidal reign in Cambodia; and a violent border war with China, yet, Ho Chi Minh City reflected the decades of commercial isolation owing to America’s punishing trade embargo and countless bone-chilling horrors of its past. 

Outside my window the next morning was a brilliant orange and inside my head Robin Williams was shouting “Gooood Morning, Vietnam!” The city was already a rush of bicycles and Honda cubs. Following a briefing using detailed travel maps, we began our journey from the south to the north, from Ho Chi Minh City’s Mekong River Delta to Hanoi. A backup bus followed the last rider with our luggage, supplies and three locals to assist those unable to cycle the full journey averaging about 140 miles a day from 6am to 4pm. 

The bus was popular as most did token cycling of around 30 miles a day before seeking refuge in its air-conditioned comfort. I doggedly avoided that option, choosing instead to explore Vietnam’s varied terrains, its people and cultures on my own. The landscapes and open country were reminiscent of my boyhood: towns looking like huge markets in session, slum dwellings, wooden huts, tropical forests, afternoon showers, padi terraces… The old thrill returned every time I stopped by wayside stalls for noodles or rice, gobbled down with chopsticks while being fanned by the South China Sea’s bold winds. 

During the three-day break in Hanoi before we flew out, I hired a motorbike, and with Danielle, ventured into Hanoi’s hilly regions aided by four local children, one a cheeky, spirited little Coca-Cola seller with a missing arm he matter-of-factly said was blown up! On another day, I cycled the short distance north of the city to Lang Son which borders China, to satisfy my curiosity for country borders, a fascination that probably began when as a five-year-old I craned my neck from Papa’s Austin Cambridge for my first look of Singapore from the Johor causeway. The excitement was no less when I did it at the Gambia from the border of Senegal, Brunei from Sabah or when I biked from Manali to Leh in India, into Tibet. The most visceral thrill of all by far was gazing at the Brazilian border from Argentina’s spectacular Iguazu Park hosting the almighty Iguazu Falls.

I left Vietnam full of admiration for its people’s vitality, optimism and friendliness despite their decades of bloodshed and persecution. It is no wonder many war-displaced Vietnamese from all over the world pilgrimage to their battered but breathtaking homeland to travel, donate, raise funds, start businesses, resettle or simply slum it with their ancestors. The trip also made me decide no more herd travels for I enjoyed taking roads less travelled and choosing my travel partners. 

In 1998, Geoffrey was approaching retirement and we decided to have a leaving party at the offices of Whiteside & Knowles. Tony set about organising it and inviting all the relevant players in the legal and financial sectors, including Geoffrey’s important clients. Tony was helped by Alison, a Welsh firebrand I’d interviewed and taken on board as assistant solicitor for she displayed attributes of a remarkable lawyer. My partners couldn’t be more pleased. None could have anticipated the minefield ahead.

The party was beautiful and befitting; so was Geoffrey’s parting speech that true to form gathered sniggers and winks in equal measure to claps and cheers. Geoffrey was effusive in his fondness for me and also expressed his hope and confidence in the current partners taking his firm to greater heights.  

It was the same year of the Asian Financial Crisis that had thrown the Malaysian currency into turmoil and Kuala Lumpur hosted the 16th Commonwealth Games, the first Asian country to do so. I landed at the spanking new KL International Airport situated not far from Prang Besar estate, the tropical forest turned plantation turned Malaysia’s new administrative capital, Putrajaya. I hired a car at the airport for the hour’s drive into the city, greeted all along by impressive hoardings and billboards to mark the big occasion, as well as signboards indicating Dengkil and Sepang, both unheard-of backwaters in my time. My mind took its own journey. I was once again the proud Prang Besar Estate boy in a t-shirt, shorts and slippers standing face to face with the loin-clothed native Sakai transmitting an unspoken message, “Won’t be long before you lose your habitat too”.

Cousin Rajan visited me at the Shangri La where I stayed for the duration of the games and sometimes accompanied me to the various venues where I watched all the athletics, badminton and cricket. Sports aside, there was much fodder for conversation as prime minister Dr Mahathir had sacked his deputy, Anwar Ibrahim, over accusations of corruption and sexual indecency. ‘Never heard the word sodomy before but now the whole country knows it! “Just wait and see… there’s going to be a lot of drama after these games,” I remember Rajan saying. 

True enough. In the weeks after the successful Commonwealth Games, headlines about Malaysia were accompanied by visuals and footage of armed riot police with water cannons, tear gas and batons battling waves of anti-government protesters. By the time I returned to Malaysia once again the following year, this time for the first Malaysian Formula 1 Grand Prix at Sepang, Malaysia’s rising voice of discontent had got its rallying cry. Reformasi. – June 22, 2024.

* This is the last of a three-part serialisation of ‘Racket Boy: Where’s My Country?’, a memoir by Philip George and Geetha K. that chronicles George’s life from his beginnings in Malaysia to his eventual settlement in an Italian village. The book is described as a story of a man in search of his identity. It is available in all major bookstores.