GEORGE TOWN: People who are illiterate or just cannot put thought on paper, crowd into an olden-day coffee shop in the heritage enclave here almost daily.
At the shop front is a decades-long nasi kandar eatery, famed for its mutton kurma, and at the back is a woman, a petition writer, listening to her clients’ needs and typing out epistles for them to find the solutions they seek.
For simple writing, Priyalakshimi Mahenthiran Rayer, 38, only charges RM10 because she knows her clientele are mainly from the B40 community.
She is a qualified lawyer who stopped practising law and became perhaps the only petition writer in the heritage enclave, following her grandfather’s footsteps.
She remembers a man asking her late grandfather to write a love letter in English to his lady six years ago.
“He gave details to my grandfather, such as how his girlfriend loved Western food and so on,” said Priyalakshimi, known to her clients as Priya.
She works out of a spacious desk right beside where the coffee shop fixes beverages at the corner of Lebuh Bishop and Jalan Masjid Kapitan Keling.
“I had a few other businesses at the time but somehow, I found my passion in petition-writing and have been doing it for the past six years without any regrets.
“I was in my 20s when my late grandfather started petition-writing, and I used to observe him and help him out whenever I could.
“Although this is not a glamorous job in an air-conditioned office, I was inspired by my grandfather to do it out of passion, more as a public service to those in the lower-income brackets,” said Priya.
She likened her job to a ‘one-stop centre’ where people want their complaints and grievances to be worded in black and white and directed to the right channels.
“I try my best to settle most of their problems because sometimes they don’t seem to know where to go to solve their issues,” she said.
Her most recent and somewhat dramatic literary effort was when a man sought help to write a complaint letter about groups extorting money from him for the Chinese New Year and he could not take it anymore.
In the course of the usual day, Priya is asked to write letters to government departments, draft statutory declarations, do translations and fill out all manner of application forms.
She also writes meeting minutes, book-keeping data, wills, inheritance transfers, quotations and many others.
Petition writers were common in the 1960s and 1970s, often just setting up a collapsible table under a tree, armed with a typewriter and a ream of paper, near courthouses and government offices.
Such petition writers are no longer seen today with the advent of the Internet, information technology and artificial intelligence.
Priya, who also offers paralegal services, said the digitalisation era has changed the old trade of petition-writing too.
“Even though I have so many walk-in customers, I settle most matters online for my regular customers.
“Even when I am travelling, I can work on their requests and send it to my customers,” she said.
Priya, who is of Indian-Chinese parentage, said being able to converse fluently in Mandarin, Tamil and Bahasa Malaysia was her prime advantage.
Catering mainly for those in the lower-income brackets, Priya admitted it was difficult to make petition-writing into a gainful livelihood.
“If someone is looking to make big bucks by doing this, then it is not for them. Since I have my other businesses, I will continue doing this as long as people need me to write for them,” she said.
Priya added that despite the lack of monetary satisfaction, she feels fulfilled when her customers dropped by to say that a letter she wrote or an application she had filled out for them brought positive results.
“Recently, a man dropped by to say that a letter I wrote for him had helped him get his job back.
“These are the small but meaningful gestures from customers which makes me feel that I must be doing something right,” she added.
