By Fiona Sun | South China Morning Post | Hong Kong |
Wearing his black lawyer’s gown and Sikh headgear, Saajandeep Singh, 25, stood out when he took his oath at Hong Kong’s High Court last month. He is believed to be the city’s first locally trained turbaned solicitor.
“I felt a range of emotions. It was a culmination of years of work,” said the young man, the only member of an ethnic minority community among 23 new solicitors admitted on October 29.
Singh’s grandfather came from Punjab, India, to work in Hong Kong in the 1960s. His father, a Correctional Services officer born and raised in the city, brought his bride from India and she now works in a bank.
Both parents emphasised the importance of education as they raised Singh and his older brother, now 26 and a doctor at Queen Mary Hospital.
Singh said his father had longed to go to university, but was forced to begin working at a young age to support the family.
Growing up in their home next to Stanley Prison, where his father worked, Singh could see prisoners playing basketball or mowing the grass. That often made him wonder why some people ended up in jail and what decided their fate.
That, and an interest in philosophy, led him to decide on law as a career.
Read the full story here.
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