A lifetime of research: Ghulam Sarwar Yousof

In case you are curious, this man here is Prof Ghulam Sarwar Yousof. In June this year, he was honoured by the Penang Governor with the honorific title of Dato, in recognition to his services to Penang in the 1970s whilst still a member of the academia at the University of Penang (later renamed the University of Science Malaysia or Universiti Sains Malaysia). He was the man that set up Malaysia's first performing arts programme at the university in 1970.

Our paths crossed briefly maybe once or twice, and that would have been in 1972. I can't remember for sure and I doubt whether or not he would remember me at all. But yes, we did exchange some no holds barred public correspondences in The Straits Echo, Penang's premier local newspaper in those days. Such was the exuberant nature of teenaged youth that my friends and I wrote with a lot of abandon. Of course, he did return the compliment as good as he received. Suffice to say that we teenagers felt rather awed that a person of his stature would reply to us. It actually encouraged me to dabble more in writing when I grew older.

I'm blogging about him here because in the next few weeks, I'll be making public these three or four letters, some written by me and some written by my friends, as I reflect back on the founding of the Penang Chess Association. Very few people would know that Ghulam Sarwar was the first secretary of the Penang Chess Association. I wouldn't know how he got himself involved with chess but I would say that as the association's pro-tem secretary, he contributed a lot to its early years. He stepped down after a year or two, having decided to channel his energy elsewhere. But for those brief years, I have to thank you, Ghulam Sarwar, for your efforts.

Possibly, this excerpt from his website reveals something about him which we'll never get to know otherwise:

Referring to his lifetime involvement in theatre, Prof Ghulam-Sarwar Yousof claims, in all seriousness, that he has never really been interested in theatre, except perhaps as an occasional, casual, observer. It all happened by chance in 1970 when he was “persuaded” (more accurately coerced) on a “temporary” basis, to set up the Performing Arts programme at USM by its first Vice-Chancellor, the late Tan Sri Hamzah Sendut, who then further persuaded him to stay on in theatre. He thus became Malaysia’s first theatre scholar by chance rather than design, and has been trying all along to get out of it. Along the way he has been carried, as if by a relentless flood, into numerous territories, a few known, others utterly strange. He has often been asked what his “real” specialty is as an academician. He is unable to tell; he wished he knew. If there is one important discovery Prof Ghulam-Sarwar Yousof has made while dabbling in all these different disciplines, he says, it is that, essentially, knowledge cannot be separated into compartments. Wisdom is One.