by priya kulasagaran

Learned cabbie: Ganesan says that having knowledge and passion are factors for one to succeed. Email Facebook 3 A taxi driver attributes his recent success to sheer perseverance and hard work. IT IS a Friday night in early 2008, and Ganesan Venugopal is deciding on which of his few worn-out cassettes to play for his journey back home. As he drives down Kuala Lumpurs windy roads, instead of music, Ganesans taxi fills up with a lecture on the legal difference between murder and manslaughter. Just six months earlier, the 45-year-old had enrolled himself into the LLB Law programme at Brickfields Asia College (BAC), and is trying hard to catch up. He does not know it yet, but in a few months his taxi will be repossessed at this moment however, he is just tired from a full week of lectures, tutorials and work.

Normally, he would consider having a drink or two to forget about his problems and go to bed, but that is not an option when he needs to be fresh and alert for the weekend classes ahead. He thinks of his classmates he will see tomorrow, smiles to himself and pays attention to the intricacies of Criminal Law playing on tape. I used to listen to those tapes so much that I began to hear the lecturers voices in my sleep! says Ganesan in an interview with StarEducate, recently After attending classes, I still had to drive my taxi at least five or six hours a day to pay off the daily rental of RM50 a day. So while I couldnt spend enough time sitting down and reading notes, I decided to record the lectures and listen instead. Now a proud owner of a law degree, the 50-year-old exudes the kind of confidence that comes with hard-earned accomplishment something he says was a far cry from his first day at college. When I first came for the part-time classes, I was shivering because I saw all these men in suits and ties, and women dressed in their best clothes. I thought I couldnt be with such people, and just walked out. But the college administrators convinced me to come for the full-time classes instead. When I arrived for the full-time class, it was pin drop silence when I opened the door I really stood out among all the 19 and 20-year-olds, he says. Ganesans first real hurdle in the classroom however, was the language of instruction. I came from the Malay-medium, and while I could speak a bit of English, it wasnt good enough for this level of work. My classmates used to help by explaining things to me in Tamil, and instead of simply photocopying notes, I would rewrite everything to learn proper spelling, grammar, and recognise new words. Later on, I started attending both the full-time and part-time classes, and the lecturers were really God-sent as well, he says. The simple explanation for why Ganesan chose to take up Law was his experience with the legal system. First, he says, was the question of how his late fathers taxi permit could have passed on to a third unrelated party.

Then there was the purchase of his house, which turned into a land dispute due to an error made by the Land Office. These incidents may have prompted Ganesan to want to know more about this joker they call the Law, but the desire to go to university had been unconsciously blooming in his mind years before. I had customers who paid me to drive their children around to scout for universities, sometimes as far as Johor and Singapore, says Ganesan. So Ill be waiting at these huge campuses, watching students walking around the greenery with their books in hand, and going through the brochures left behind in my car. And always, at the back of my mind, Id wish I was 20 or 30 years younger because I missed this. As we sit by the tall glass windows of BACs Kuala Lumpur campus overlooking the streets of Brickfields, Ganesan recounts his memories of growing up in the area, particularly at the since demolished Kampung Khatijah. We could see the toddy shop from our classroom window, and the row of colourful plastic cups for just five cents each; that was quite tempting for the naughty boy I was, he says with a laugh. I would say that it was not the sort of area the upper class would visit or want their children to be in. It wasnt as rough as people thought it was, but the general attitude was just about getting by and you can easily find the kind of crowd that you will get into trouble with. As he was steadily making his way through his first year of Law school, the second big blow for Ganesan was when his taxi was repossessed. While Ganesan has no children of his own, he had a range of other commitments to worry about; aside from his house payments, he was supporting his elderly mother, a sister with Down Syndrome, and his late brothers two sons. With his wifes pay of almost RM4,000 from her job at a bank, and barely making RM1,000 a month himself through odd-jobs, Ganesan had cause to worry about finances. Thats when BAC really helped me, they told me to pay whatever I could, and later waived the college fees so I only had to pay for examination fees. My regular customers indirectly helped as well, because they would still pay me to drive them around in my own 15-year-old car.

We made some sacrifices... sometimes we just had kanji (porridge) for dinner, but we didnt feel we were giving up that much getting that degree was the priority, he says. The real struggle was what Ganesan calls the invisible cage. Relatives, friends, people around you, they can form a cage ... it may be jealously, but I think its more that theyre afraid that they will lose you if you change, become a different person. So they discourage you, make comments, and tell you that what youre doing is pointless; its the system that keeps you trapped. If you can keep your focus, and break that cage, 80% of the battle is won the same people who tried to keep me in the cage are now applauding me, he says. Now Ganesan hopes to open even more doors by pursuing a Masters degree and becoming an educator. Ive become greedy now, I want to keep studying! he says with a laugh. Im not interested in moulding A-grade students, I want to reach out to others like me and show them that theres another world they can experience through education. What you really need in life is knowledge and passion.