Justice Not Prevail!!

I finished reading “My Name Is Red” last night. Who would think that the life of miniaturist & painters during the Ottoman period in Istanbul could be very intriguing? No wonder the writer, Orhan Pamuk won the Nobel Prize for literature. I will start ‘White Tiger” soon and that should be another interesting read since the book won MAN Booker Prize 2008.
Ah, books, greatest pleasure in life! And I remember, with bitterness (yes, very bitter) that in 1982, when I was in Standard 5, I won a reading contest organized by the school I attended. Oh, don’t get me wrong, winning was sweet and I was proud and feel rewarded. I was bitter about what happened days after. You see, the winner was determined from how many books he/she borrowed from the school library during the year. And my next competitor (wah, competitor tu..) did not even borrowed half number of books I did! So, a rumour spread that I borrowed books only to return the next day without reading them so that I could borrow another books (students were allowed to borrow up to 3 books only at any particular time). I was annoyed but, it was talk among other pupils and didn’t bother me much. It was when A TEACHER CALLED ME A CHEAT that broke my heart. Yes, a teacher did so, IN FRONT OF THE WHOLE 5A CLASS!! Couldn’t he just pull me aside, away from other pupils and ask for explanation/verification/clarification or whatever? But no, he felt the need to just shout out there in front of everybody so that it could be a teladan to others. No, it’s not to follow my reading habit, but NOT to cheat like I did! How would you, dear reader think an 11 year old kampong boy to feel suddenly being chastised like that?? What upset me most was that I could not defend myself then, how can I prove that I really read all those books?? I was helpless. I cannot walk with my head held high even days after that. I felt like I was a common criminal you see in the newspaper with his eyes blacked out. I was the worst student in the school! And all I did was only to be the most read student for 1982. How I wished the school year to end ASAP.
That incident, small as it was, never forgotten and still upset me to think about it. Because I know I was right, but others don’t. And up to now, I still feel that they must know that I really read all those books and I won that little plaque (now still sitting in my mother’s cabinet) fairly. I am still angry about justice not prevail!
But life continues. Luckily the incident never put any dent in my love for books. In fact I grew to love them more. My wife & I now decided to keep the “save more spend less” budget now that our 2 children are growing up, and we’d moved to a bigger house with higher monthly instalments with more expenses incurred, the portion for books never reduced. Yes, I can live with no new CD, no movie, no eating out but I CANNOT live without books, NO, reader, I cannot live without books (Oh, MPH is having sale this week and I cannot miss that too, as much as my wife cannot miss the Sogo & Jaya Jusco sale)
Ciao.