Free A Doctor in The House: A Memoir of Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad by Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad Page A

ordination at St Andrew’s Cathedral in Singapore when I was at medical college.
    I did not play games much in school because I was not very good at them. Even in football you have to know how to pass the ball to another player. But I did play rugby. Rugby does not require skill, just the willingness to get hurt. I don’t think I was a good player, but I could pick up the ball with my hands and run. I enjoyed the push and shove of the scrum. I was a member of the team in medical college as well, and was a reserve player for the Singapore All Blues—though I never got a chance to play.
    Textbooks were not available so soon after the war. We had to share notes and whatever old books there were. The Japanese had destroyed the science laboratory too, so the school did not begin teaching science subjects again. Whatever I knew of science, I had learned before the Japanese Occupation. This would later prove a handicap for me when I studied medicine. But at the time not being able to study science did not worry me. I did not know I would be going on to study medicine. In fact, I did not even think I would make it to any form of higher education.
    Mathematics was my favourite subject. It bothers me greatly that my own children and grandchildren are reliant on calculators and not adept at mental arithmetic. My father was very particular about mathematics and used to tutor me and my brother at home. Mathematical skills are absolutely essential in life, especially in business. I had reasoned that because the Chinese boy grows up behind the shop counter where he has to calculate the change, he is more skilful in mathematics. The Malay boy in front of the counter does not need to do any calculations after his purchase. My argument may be simplistic but this regular exposure to the exchange of money must necessarily make the average Chinese boy better at mathematics than the Malay boy. I myself often did not count the change after purchasing items from local shops.
    When I was still very young I could hear the Chinese shopkeeper behind my house shaking his abacus for good luck when he opened for business in the morning. Someone told me that if you went to a Chinese shop first thing in the morning, you could name any price for what you wanted to buy because the Chinese believed it was bad luck to turn down the first sale of the day. I tried it one day, and named a ridiculous price for something, I don’t remember what. Of course, the shopkeeper said no. Today no abacus is used and I am sure that Chinese shopkeepers do not shake their calculators. But I remain committed to the empirical method, to trying things out and testing what I am told.
    In school, we went back to studying the history of the British Empire. They had not yet changed the curriculum for the Senior Cambridge Examination. But we did not discuss the Japanese defeat of the British during the war. History was supposed to be about the past, not current events—that was the teacher’s attitude anyway. I still find history fascinating. It has so many lessons to teach us that can be applied to our own times.
    I did not, and still do not, remember historical dates very well. I did not want to clutter my brain with too many things and dates were among what I chose to forget. Unfortunately, I also tend to forget people’s names, an unforgivable shortcoming in a politician. But I was good at history in school and obtained an “A” in the Senior Cambridge Examination. I also did well in geography and mathematics, the former because during the war I had pored over maps of European towns and cities where great battles were fought.
    But, though I was regarded as a good student, my teachers did not quite like me. I was perhaps “too-clever-by-half”, as they say. I wasn’t the obedient type, and obedience was what they looked for when choosing a student to be head boy or prefect. I was not made a school prefect until just before I left. My teacher Mr Lim, who had admonished me