For the love of mother and brother
What shaped and influenced this man whose name inspires awe and respect? He tells it all in his autobiography.
AT last, at the age of 94, the venerated Robert Kuok, Malaysia’s richest tycoon, tells his life story and what a wonderfully written memoir it is: full of exciting insights on how he built his conglomerate from scratch and his dealings with businessmen, government leaders and other colourful characters.
But to me, the memoir is most gripping when he writes from the heart on very personal matters. Even more riveting is finding out who and what shaped him into the man he is.
Kuok has dedicated the memoir to his late mother Tang Kak Ji and his brother, William.
“The backdrop on the stage of my life is 70-90% Mother, 10-30% William,” he writes.
We also come to know about the father, Kuok Keng Kang, a tragic, conflicted figure who still brings sorrow and guilt to Kuok.
Both parents came from Fuzhou and theirs was an arranged marriage.
Kuok Keng Kang, who left China at the age of 15 for Singapore in 1909, became a successful merchant in Johor Baru.
Tang Kak Ji was sent by her father in 1920, “at age 19, from Fuzhou to Singapore to marry Father according to Chinese rites,” writes Kuok.
But both were “not well-suited to each other”.
They had three sons and how they got their English names makes an amusing tale.
The nuns of their school insisted they adopt English names and, “Since Father didn’t know any English, he asked his only Englishspeaking clerk to select names for us.”
The clerk, a history buff, named “eldest son Hock Khee ‘Philip’ after King Philip of Spain, second son Hock Ling became ‘William’ after William the Conqueror and Hock Nien became ‘ Robert’ after Robert the Bruce of Scotland”.
Kuok senior, sadly, was distant and neglectful of his three sons who grew close to their loving, resourceful mother. Kuok, as the youngest and smallest-built son, resented his father.
The anger he felt as a child remains: “I take insults – insults to my physical being, to my mental being, to my pride – very deeply.
“It’s almost an inextinguishable flame, which is why I make a very bad enemy.
“I just felt: ‘I want to show you. I will show you.’ From early on, I developed this strong anger which, in many ways, propelled me forward in life.”
That anger indeed served Kuok well and it is tempered by his mother and brother’s tremendous compassion, kindness and humility.
Madam Tang, who passed away in 1995, was a devout Buddhist and her son, who often sought her advice, believes her prayers and goodness protected him “from harm or evil in business dealings, which are often fraught with risk”.
But Kuok’s relationship with his father remained tense.
A week after an ugly quarrel, his father suffered a heart attack and died three weeks later on Dec 26, 1948.
“I didn’t know his health was so bad, but apparently it went into a downward spiral after that huge row. From time to time, I have felt that I had hastened his death,” writes Kuok.
Kuok’s honesty extends to his reflections on his married life.
He touches briefly on his betrayal of his first wife, Joyce Cheah, when he took on a mistress, Pauline Ho, in the early 1970s who, after Joyce’s death in 1983, became his second wife.
He does not try to “whitewash” his actions and tells it as it is: he fell in love with another woman and admits that it “brought immense pain and suffering to Joy and others close to me”.
The most emotional part of the book is his loving tribute to the brother who died far too young.
The short chapter devoted to William, a socialist who was the opposite of his capitalist brother, brought me to tears.
William, he writes, was “a dreamer in the highest sense of the word”. From young, he lived by his principles of fair play and justice and stood up for the underdog.
That idealism led him to join the Malayan Communist Party (MCP). William became the MCP propaganda chief and in the eyes of the British, a terrorist.
In 1948, to escape capture, William went into the jungle, despite pleadings from his family to surrender to the authorities.
It was then Kuok “realised that life is not only about making money. Here was my own brother, one of the finest human beings I have known, risking his own life to help the downtrodden”.
Knowing how harsh life in the jungle would be, Kuok wept for his brother whom he missed desperately.
William was killed in an ambush on the border of Negri Sembilan and Pahang in August 1953. He was just 30 years old.
Decades later, Kuok would find himself in an ironic role as the intermediary between the Malaysian and Chinese governments to bring an end to the MCP, the organisation for which his beloved brother gave his life.
It has taken Kuok a long time to publish his memoir; he wrote most of it years ago.
He originally intended it as a tribute to his mother and brother but Robert Kuok A Memoir
is a timely gift to Malaysians from a Malaysian who never forgot his roots. ! " #