Cover story: The Gnanalingam women on raising families, leading with kindness and building legacy

Siew Yong graduated from the University of Malaya with a degree in economics and a diploma in accounting, going on to become the first female executive at the Malaysian Tobacco Company before a distinguished career at Malaysia Airlines, where she rose to vice-president of group corporate communications. She has been a force of nature in breaking glass ceilings throughout her career.

“I had fairly strong grandmothers and a strong mother too,” Siew Yong says. “But it was my dad who made me rise above, who wanted me to fly high.” Her father was a taxi driver in a small Malaysian hometown, a man without formal education but with an extraordinary instinct for recognising potential. He relentlessly lobbied a teacher he drove to school every day until he could secure a then six-year-old daughter Siew Yong early admission to the local convent.

“He encouraged me to participate in debate and speech competitions, and was very proud of me,” Siew Yong says. Her father willingly drove her and her fellow debaters “all over the place,” so she could compete. He even pushed back when her mother, pragmatic and hardworking herself, suggested that sports were not a suitable pursuit for a girl. “Let her do it, she’s here to learn. Stop asking her to clean,” he would say. He even, to his wife’s bafflement, encouraged Siew Yong to play football. The sport was a deep love she eventually shared with her spouse, who is credited for bringing the World Cup live telecasts to Malaysia in the 1980s, for the enjoyment of all. 

“My father was the wind beneath my wings,” Siew Yong affirms. She adds his mantra with fondness: “Don’t waste my money and your time. In whatever you choose to do, don’t just succeed but make sure you reach the highest level.”

What is striking about the Gnanalingam women is not just their individual strength, but their candour about where that strength was nurtured, and how often it was by the supportive men beside them.

Siew Yong’s late husband upheld what her father had begun. At a time when few husbands would have done so without comment, Gnanalingam encouraged his wife’s relentless travel and ambition without reservation. “He never questioned how often I flew around for work nor did he ever suggest that I should be at home more,” she says. “He told me to go for it, and because he encouraged me over so many decades, I was able to succeed in my work. If he had said to ‘forget it,’ I probably would have.”

Shaline, Siew Yong’s only daughter, is the product of her mother’s particular style of parenting: loving, but no helicopter parent. It reflects the spirit of independence her mother has always prized, alongside a clear sense that a woman’s identity need not begin and end with her children.

“One of the nicest things that she has done is that she’s always stayed quite independent,” Shaline says of her mother. “While that might be counterintuitive, it also showed me that it’s important for you to have your own life, your own goals and pursuits.” She is conscious of modelling the same lesson for her own sons. “Especially as a mother of boys, I want to show them that women are able to do more than just be a mum.”

Like her mother, Shaline credits her late father with a profound influence on who she has become. She remembers how humble he remained in the face of success, and it is that quality she is most intentional about passing on. “It’s all about kindness and humility. My parents have both always been very humble. It’s very grounding and reminds us that we are all the same at the end of the day.”

Her advice to mothers is quietly radical in its simplicity: “Be kind to yourself. Mothers take on the load of the world. It’s okay to take a step back sometimes, practice some self care and prioritise yourself.” 

Shirieene, married to Siew Yong’s eldest son, came into motherhood without an epidural and, by her own account, with a revelation. Twelve hours into labour with her first son, she turned to her husband and asked him to remind her to tell her mother that she loved her. “I also started realising all the sacrifices that she had made,” she says. “My mother was so selfless with my brother and I growing up, and I think I’m trying to emulate that as best as I can now.”

A devoted full-time mother, Shirieene made the choice to step back from work with the knowledge that there would always be time for her to return to work when her kids were older. “Sometimes with children, you’ll find there was such a small window to be present for them,” she says. Shirieene has always had Ruben’s support and encouragement. “I guess he’s a feminist because he has such a strong mother.”

Raising three boys who will one day be partners and fathers themselves is a responsibility both parents take seriously. “I want my sons to really treat their future wives well, with respect, love and devotion. I want them to be great fathers and I think that’s what Ruben and I have to do. We have to set a really good example for that.”

With her children schooling in Britain, Shirieene makes a point of pulling the family back to Malaysia during term breaks, keeping them tethered to the relatives, rituals and festive occasions that remind them where they come from. At 17, her eldest son Reyess embodies his late grandfather’s quiet determination. “He went to boarding school young. He was determined to play football and had a five-year plan,” Shirieene says, acknowledging it was hard to let him go. It was her late father-in-law who offered counsel that Shirieene still holds close: “If he has come up with a plan, you’ve got to hear him out. Life is fluid, he needs the chance to go try.”

Acknowledging that boys face increasing challenges in a world that demands them to mature too quickly, Shirieene has consciously encouraged her children to enjoy childhood to the fullest. “We want our children to embrace how they feel and learn to express themselves.” 

Her method, particularly with adolescent boys who offer little conversationally, is one of patient presence. “Sometimes when you’re very present, then they will learn to quietly come to you for help. I once sat in my son’s room for three hours,” she says. “He asked, what are you doing, mum? And I said I’m just here, when and if you’re ready.” It is, she explains, the only approach that works. “The more you ask, the more you nag, the more you get nothing.”

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Shirieene and Ruben hope to raise kind, humble and joyful children. She recounts a lesson from her beloved former headmistress, the late Mrs Rasammah Bhupalan, who told her students: “If you meet a traffic police aiding the traffic, make sure you smile at him when you go by because he’s been standing there for a few hours to help ease your route home. A smile goes a long way.” Shirieene has passed this on to her own sons. “You don’t know how it might affect a person that day. You could really be cheering somebody up.”

Kelly Gnanalingam, Surin’s wife and mother of the youngest additions to the family, carries a quiet warmth and openness that is entirely her own. Another working woman who chose to step back from her career when her daughter Soniaa was born five years ago, she speaks about motherhood as teaching her what love truly means. “It’s a pure feeling in the sense that I have never cared for someone to the point of wanting to endure pain and suffering in their place,” she says. “Motherhood taught me this selfless love that I hadn’t known I was capable of.”

As the only granddaughter in the family, Soniaa is, by everyone’s account, unmistakably her grandmother’s girl: socially fearless, averse to leaving a party early and entirely at ease in a crowd. The resemblance delights them all.

Living under the same roof as her mother-in-law has been a dynamic defined by mutual respect and affection. “My husband’s family have taught me the importance of unity, humility and kindness. That is what I’m striving to instill in my children now,” Kelly says. She has found, in her sisters-in-law, a different kind of education: Shirieene, she says, is particularly “caring and imaginative” in bringing the family together, while Shaline is her expert go-to for anything from business and finance to education. “I’m very lucky to call them family.”

In moments of uncertainty, Kelly is quick to name her husband as her first port of call. “He supports me unconditionally in whatever way that I need. He has always been my number one supporter,” she says. It is a partnership that mirrors, in many ways, the one Siew Yong described with her own late husband: a steady presence that makes everything else possible.

The values Kelly hopes to pass on are ones she has absorbed from watching the Gnanalingam family up close. “I appreciate how charitable my mother-in-law is, and how devoted she is to advocating for mother earth,” she says, adding that kindness, to her mind, is also simply good sense. “I also think kindness and humility is what draws real friends close.”

It is a conviction she nurtures each evening, around the dinner table. “Communication is key. I always ensure that my husband and the kids can sit down to dinner together because that’s the perfect moment for sharing. Even Soniaa has learned to come home from kindergarten and describe bad days. I’m so happy that my kids feel safe to open up to us.”

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