Something I wrote on Karpal Singh and Lim Kit Siang in The Star, in 1996! Yes, it was 18 years ago, when I was a rookie of less than three years. It appeared on P7 and P8. I interviewed both politicians myself, and the Karpal Singh interview was at his office in Pudu. I still remember that He asked Jagdeep, who is now a Penang state Assembly rep, to make coffee for me, the young lady reporter. I thought it was Gobind, but having sat next to Jagdeep and his spouse during a flight to Phnom Penh last year, I shared the story with him and discovered it was Jagdeep, not Gobind, when I told them circa when the interview happened. It was supposed to be a Page One for Section 2 (features page, now called Star Two) but the night before publication, the story was moved to P7. The group chief editor then, Ng Poh Tip, thought it was not appropriate for the Star to feature DAP leaders so prominently, even for the features section. Mind you, The Pages for features are laid out a couple of days before the news pages, so the chief sub had to redo four or five pages at least and scramble to look for another story to be featured for Page One, the night before it hit the printing presses! How We Met was a series we ran in the Star in the mid-1990s, which featured stories of two famous people and, well, how they met. It was part of what we journalists wanted to do to ensure critical voices were featured in the newspapers, knowing what our limitations were. I suggested the combo of Syed Husin Ali-Usman Awang, which was assigned to someone else (which I was bummed about cos I wanted to do the interview). I also did When Loga Met Singam, which was an interview with the Comedy Court duo, in character, written 100% by them, and they incorporated me in it! The published interview was such a Hoot! Thanks to Eddin Khoo for giving the idea. This one on Karpal and Kit was definitely not among my best writing; it is memorable because it was about Karpal and Kit. I would like to thank my editor then June Wong (now the Stars group editor in chief) for making it better than what it was. And thanks, of course, to Martin Vengadesan, for putting this up on their Facebook page when I flagged it a few nights ago. Martin wrote a fine feature on Karpal a few years ago. Happy reading. And to Mr Karpal Singh, thank you, sir, for being kind and gracious to me way back in 1996.
Posted on: Sat, 19 Apr 2014 06:10:07 +0000
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