Despite meticulous plans, hard work, persistence, and perseverance, certain aspects of our life still go in unwanted or unintended directions. Some have strange and even funny ways of coming full circle.
In my case, what has come full circle is my journey in the field of writing as a means of explaining and expressing thoughts to oneself or others. Let me explain further by taking you back to my childhood in the 1960s.
I was not a brilliant student and definitely not the way Albert Einstein was. Arithmetic was particularly difficult for me, and I hated the multiplication table with a passion as it was so hard to memorise. On the other hand, while I was slow in addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division, I quickly caught on to writing and reading. Not that I understood everything I read, but I could read all the words in my textbooks and spell them.
In a world where everyone is blind, a one-eyed person would be king. Yet, in my then-world, where not everyone could read and write, my ability went unnoticed. And why should it be otherwise? I was, after all, a primary school student who was expected to read and write. It was no big deal, and it would have remained unremarkable and unrecognised had it not been for some of the illiterate seniors and elders in my village.
One day in 1963, when I was in Primary 4, an uncle (one of my mother’s cousins) came to our house while I was eating sugarcane on the veranda.
During his conversation with my mother, I overheard him saying that he wanted to get a message to one of his sons. The young man was working in a far-away place. As my uncle was illiterate my mother suggested that he should get someone to write a letter for him.
He, however, did not want to do that as he felt ashamed of letting outsiders know about the private affairs of his family.
I almost suggested that he should get his younger son to write, but then I remembered that the boy, who was slightly older than me, was not too bright. Before I could come up with another suggestion, my mother told him to ask if I would be willing to write the letter.
That took me by surprise. So surprised was I that my mind went blank for a moment and I failed to hear what my uncle was saying.
“What?” I asked after my mind had cleared.
“Would you write for me?” said my uncle.
“I never wrote a letter before,” I replied.
“More important is, can you write?” he asked.
“I can, but I don’t know what to say.”
“I will tell you what to write.”
“Okay, but I have no paper to write on. I don’t want to tear a page from my notebook. It’s almost used up.”
So off he went to look for a piece of paper. He came back the next day with a blank page taken from the centre of his son’s exercise book. In those days, a clean blank paper was hard to come by. And he even brought a brand-new pencil including an envelope that he bought from one of the village shops.
It was a bit of a struggle to compose the letter. Not because I could not spell well but because he could not gather his thoughts properly. He kept changing his mind and often stopped to find the proper words to say while I chewed the pencil ferrule and eraser to bits. When he had said all that needed to be written I read the letter to him. He was visibly happy and amazed that I could repeat his exact words. He did not know it, but I was just as amazed as him. It was, after all, the first time that I wrote something of that sort, and I did not know that a letter was supposed to be like that.
For the envelope, my uncle produced a rather dirty scrap of paper from his pocket and gave it to me. On it was written the full name of his son and the address of his workplace. These I copied carefully onto the envelope and my job was done.
After school a few days later, my mother gave me some sugary biscuits. She said my uncle had gone to Serian town to post the letter and on the way home he bought the biscuits as a gift.
I thought that was that, but my uncle must have talked about his letter because it wasn’t long before some other people came to ask for a similar favour.
So from around that time till I left my family and village three years later to stay and study at Serian Secondary School, I wrote several letters for different people for a variety of purposes.
An interesting development which I did not know was going to happen was, some of the very people that I helped also came back to have the replies to their letters read to them.
Even more interesting were expressions of love that I helped put on paper. Of course, at that age, I did not know that they were love letters. I was too young to understand matters of the heart and what the birds and the bees were all about.
To me, the words sounded silly and rather confusing. When I asked my mother to explain some of them, she said that I did not need to understand what I wrote as long as I stayed true to the dictations.
It quickly occurred to me that I was unwittingly exposed to adult thoughts, some of which had to do with things that they normally would not talk about in public. I never spoke to anybody (except for my mother) about the letters because it just felt wrong to share what was meant for my ears only.
So I took my mother’s advice by writing only what I was told as accurately as possible. With each letter, I found it easier and easier when I listened closely and stayed true to the way something was said. I never put my own “interpretation” in unless I was asked to help find the right words. I made it a point not to interrupt the persons that I wrote the letters for. I waited for them to make their points before writing, and then re-checked with them.
I think it was sometime in the mid-1970s (circa 1974 or 1975) that I came upon a word in the Encyclopaedia Britannica that described what I was doing all those past years. This happened while I was looking for something to read in the Kuching Municipal Council Library at Jalan P. Ramlee.
Amanuensis! I stared at the word for quite a while; reading and re-reading the definition. Up till that very day, I did not know I was an amanuensis.
An amanuensis is a person who writes or types what another dictates, or copies what has been written by another. A person who signs a document on behalf of, or under the authority of another is also an amanuensis.
If the word seems strange and hard to remember or spell, don’t fret. A shorthand typist is an amanuensis; so is a stenographer.
The word originated in ancient Rome, for a slave who was always “within hand’s reach” of his master. Later it was applied specifically to a trusted servant acting as a personal secretary. In a courtroom, you might see a stenographer quickly typing up what everyone in the room is saying.
Another word for amanuensis is a scribe who may be asked to draw diagrams and read back materials to a group or on a one-to-one basis. Preferably, scribes need to be familiar with the subject area and terminology and to have neat and legible handwriting, or, if using a computer, they should be proficient in word processing.
In the school or university setting, scribing for a lecture consists of taking high-quality, detailed notes to be compiled into a polished version.
Since ancient Rome, the profession has developed into public servants, journalists, accountants, bookkeepers, typists, and lawyers. In societies with low literacy rates, letter-writers and readers may still be found providing scribe services.
Writing came full circle for me when I entered the world of mass media starting in the early 1970s. Today I am still a journalist and still derive a lot of satisfaction from writing because I consider it a healthy way of expressing feelings and saying what’s on my mind. It does not matter whether or not the writings are published, or whether or not the letters are sent. It has been said that writing is therapeutic because at the core of it is self-expression.
Thinking about the letters that I wrote to help others in the past, I now see them as good gifts. Many of them were truly heartfelt and counted among the most precious of gifts for the recipients. I was told that some of the letters were the most cherished possessions of the recipients.
A woman once told me that she found her mother’s love letters. They were tied with a piece of string and kept inside a drawer. When I told her that I wrote those letters for her father, she laughed so hard and then ended up crying tears of gladness. She believed that although they were not demonstrative or expressive in their words and actions, her parents did love each other till death did them part.
I have no such letters to keep and the few that I received were lost many years ago. But I have no regrets and I am not sad. There are lots of letters in my mind and heart. True, they belonged to others but I still cherish them and will bring the memories to my grave.
I conclude this article with a quote:
“Words are singularly the most powerful force available to humanity… Words have energy and power with the ability to help, to heal, to hurt, to harm, to humiliate and to humble.” The words we choose and how we use them can build others up or tear them down.”
– Yehuda Berg, author
The views expressed here are those of the writer and do not necessarily represent the views of the New Sarawak Tribune.
