story board: If I get too weak, you'll hold me close...

It’s Valentine’s Day and my mom just told me a love story.

No… Not about her and her bf.

It’s Tan Sri Eusoffe Abdoolcader. A lot might know him for 1988 judicial crisis. Read it on Wikipedia if you want to know about the crisis. ~~Politic/Justice/Shit/Etc~~

Not much info can be found on the net about the late Tan Sri. Tan Sri was born on September 18, 1924 , studied in Penang Free School, graduated with first class honours in LLB from University College, London.

My mom told me that his wife was a Malaysian Chinese and they conversed with each other in Bahasa Melayu or Chinese because his wife didn’t know English.

The marriage between Tan Sri and Mdm Haseena wasn’t Mdm’s first, but he loved her so so much that he became devastated when she passed away in 1993. My mom said her death was probably due to tongue cancer.

Mom said that he wrote poems for her and published them in the newspapers until his death. From the internet resources, it is said that on every anniversary of her death, he took full-page ads, and dedicated his love to her in poems written in Latin, together with English translations.

Now, I was wondering why he knew Latin, the dead language... And it turned out that, the late Tan Sri learned the language to study Justinian Law.

So, every year, he would publish the love poem he wrote for her in national newspapers.

Ever since her death, he had been profoundly depressed and finally committed suicide on January 11, 1996.

RIP

Tan Sri Dato' Dr. Eusoffe Abdoolcader
18 September 1924 - 11 January 1996

These are the only two poems of his, I could find online.

"My love, Light of my Life!
I think of thee in silence
And often speak thine name:
All I have are memories
And photos in a frame;
To thy resting-place I wander
To place roses with love and care::
But no one can know the heartache
As I turn and leave thee there;
No monument can stand more stalwart
Than the everlasting love we share,
let’s then rejoice and ever bear in mind
That such a bond surely makes us but
one of a kind.”

From the comment in Desiderata’s blog:

"My dearest darling, half of soul, light of my life and jewel of all wives..

I think of thee, of thee and yet of thee,
like thee there never yet can ever be..thine two intoxicating eyes i miss, and thy cheeks and lips i used to kiss..

If Helen of Troy were clad in the beauty of thousand stars, then thou gentle as evening air art in mine eyes, as shine the moon among the lesser fires,

Of all the queens that ever lived, I chose thee to rule me, mine very own Haseena , my one and only, to the very marrow thou will see I love ye,

O' how in the world am I to live without thee?"

While searching for more info, saw an interesting comment in LimKitSiang blog,

#17 by Jeffrey on Tuesday, 23 October 2007 - 12:40 pm

Justice Eusoffe Abdoolcader was a different kettle of fish.

Extremely learned and wide read in law with razor sharp brain and a tongue to match – he terrified lesser beings. Even senior lawyers got ticked off. There was a joke making rounds whenever Eusoffe was to sit to hear a case. Besides law reports, bring along the English, Law and Latin dictionaries, just in case one needed to refer. Eusoffe (1st class honours in law and conferred honour of citizen of London in his 20s) was editor of Malayan Law Journals and hence had access to the latest cases decided fresh in London. He would just flash a copy of these cases and ask the lawyers, “you know about this case? I have photostated one for your continuous legal education!"

We don’t get this kind of judges anymore.