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Contributed by Biliwi Singh

AMPANG: Malaysia’s oldest practising lawyer Sonni Pillai passed away on June 18, aged 85.

Born in a small provincial town outside Rangoon Burma in 1923 he followed his father – a barrister of the Inner Temple to Penang following the Great Depression.

After his Senior Cambridge he went back to Burma and attended Rangoon University where his contemporaries were the likes of Aung San (the father of Aung San Suu Kyi - Nobel Peace Laureate and Myanmar’s Democratic Leader)

With the outbreak of Second World Way he was sent to Ceylon where he came under the tutelage of Sir Ivor Jennings - the great constitutional law scholar.

Immediately after the War, whilst London was still reeling under the impact of Nazi bombings, Sonni entered Gray's Inn to pursue his law studies and passed out in 1950. Upon his return to Malaya he chambered with Thomas Conaghan and after his call to the Bar he joined his father’s firm of Pillai and Eng Chiang. One of his closest companions from early practice till towards his end was Supreme Court Judge Eusoffe Abdoolcader. They had a lot in common especially their love for Latin.

After many years at the Bar, Sonni accepted the offer of Crown Counsel in Hong Kong for two years. Upon his return, he teamed up with Lorrain Osman of the Bank Bumiputra Berhad fame and later left for Penang again to practise with the firm of Ng Ek Teong & Partners. He then left for a stint with Arab Malaysian Bank Berhad as the head of legal department. He resumed practice in Kuala Lumpur and continued till the end.

One of the sad episodes of his life was he was declared persona non grata by the regime in Myanmar in 1982 which prevented him attending his mother’s funeral in Rangoon. He always had a soft spot for what he was also called Burma and said if there was one place he would want to be it was there.

We in Selangor Bar were very fortunate to have interviewed him for our magazine Ad Rem. He reluctantly granted the interview mostly due to his failing health. The interview and subsequent joint editing of the script took some time but we managed to conclude it just weeks ahead of his demise. After reading the first draft, his comments to the Editor was that he did not deserve the accolades and he quoted W B Yeats…”an aged man is but a paltry thins, a tattered coat upon a stick”

Well he wasn’t paltry and he wasn’t tattered. He was the quintessential barrister from a different age.

The interview is available in the forthcoming issue of Ad Rem which has just gone to print.

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