Cultural icon

I attended this year's edition of the Putra Lectures yesterday. That's the short form for the Tunku Abdul Rahman Putra Lectures, organised yearly by the PFS Foundation and named after the country's first Prime Minister who happened to study at Penang Free School for a few years from 1916.

Anis Yusal Yusoff. Picture by Loh Lean Kang

This year, the Putra Lecture was co-organised with the National Archives and they brought with them a whole crew of staff to make the Lecture a truly memorable one. The topic covered was on P Ramlee, Malaysia's greatest cultural icon, who also happened to study at Penang Free School after World War Two ended and the Japanese had surrendered.

Dr Anis Yusal Yusoff, an Old Free and a Director at the Centre for Leadeship and Professional Development in the University of Malaya, delivered an interesting 45-minute lecture on P Ramlee with several anecdotes that connected the icon with his family.

I also happen to have a connection with our national cultural icon. Five years ago, I had written that I discovered a group photograph of PFS Class VII-D taken in 1947 which showed P Ramlee standing third from left at the back row. That photograph confirmed something which my father had told me long ago, that he was once a classmate with P Ramlee. 

When I saw the same photograph displayed in a small exhibition in the Pinhorn Hall, which had been assembled by the National Archives to commemorate this lecture, I couldn't contain myself and went around telling whoever that cared to listen that "here, this is my father on the same back row as P Ramlee."

But what made my day was that at the end of the Lecture when the Headmaster handed out gifts and mementos to the speakers and guests, he chose to give them a copy of Let the Aisles Proclaim. That gesture was totally unexpected. Made me happy beyond words. My first words to Anis was to tell him that that was my book, I wrote it for the Bicentenary. And on the spot, he asked me to write something in the book for him.

Old friends. Me with Abu Huraira and Sukumaran