My encounter with Hassan Mutalib

He's a great person. That's how I would describe Hassan Mutalib. Not only he's intelligent (he doesn't require paper qualifications or the Dr title to make him a well known scholar), he inspires people. I always wanted to speak to him, so when he replied to my email and said that he loved to be interviewed I was enthusiastic. I'm just a PhD student (not even a candidate yet) but he was willing to spend his time to talk to me.

The interview went well (errr although I was giggling too much because I was nervous). In that 1 1/2 hrs I actually learned a lot, what it means to be able to teach and what it means to be able to learn. Both are equally important. Hassan Mutalib writes about films because he is passionate about his subjects and he cares about the people he wrote about.

A close friend told me about having a hero in one's life. I think I had found my hero in academic field.

This is what he thought about my paper;

Hi Raja,

Your paper was an interesting read. But I felt you didn't fully get into your title "Are they revolutionists?" You had a very pertinent quote that related to your paper from THE BIG DURIAN & this could be your focus: "Our past is disappearing in front of our eyes, which is why every memory is important." This fits in well with UMNO's dastardly deed of rewriting Malaysian history in school textbooks where the achievements of the other races are almost not recorded. In a sense, Amir & Fahmi are historians themselves.


(Insya Allah, I will write more about my interview with Hassan Mutalib in the next post!)