Professor Syed Hussein Alatas cannot have passed away. He must have simply slipped into the adjoining room. Moreover, we cannot and must not 'let him' pass away. We related to him in so many ways so that it was as though we were always dealing with more than one person at a time. There was, and will always be, a niche in our hearts that we can always turn to a niche that no one else can ever fill.

His was a strong all-round personally rooted in knowledge, and understanding underpinned with a deep sense of egalitarianism and social justice. Professor Hussein manifested these facets truly and sincerely throughout his life in all his dealings and under any circumstance without fear. These were the challenges of his life and I shall merely touch on two of them.

The first, and obviously most important, was the challenge of romancing his wife in the face of parental apprehensiveness of their daughter being pursued by a bearded Arab! All he wanted to do was to invite her for tea, but was told in no uncertain terms that in that particular community, for a maiden to do that, she will have at least have to be engaged to the man. Professor Hussein shocked them all by taking the extra step. Since tea-drinking was a fine art in which he also excelled, and which he would certainly want to repeatedly share with the charming Zahara again, he might as well marry her - which is exactly what he did!

There have been many eulogies on the professor's knowledge of and contribution to the social sciences internationally and locally and I am certainly not competent enough to add to these with confidence. However, there is one area in which I must focus because I have a stake in it and more importantly because no one else would dare to do this. I am referring to the professor's role as a social reformer and an academic activist in which he faced the greatest opposition and which I believe many Malaysians would rather be hypocritical enough to pretend never happened.

This was when he was appointed vice-chancellor of Universiti Malaya. Professor Hussein's almost immediate sweeping reforms of the entire system beginning with the curriculum review and the appointment of academic staff was the beginning of the end of his short career. As might be expected, the main problem was associated with observing the ethnic quota in the appointment and promotion of academic staff.

Although he fought hard to meet the requirements, he was at the same time not prepared to acquiesce on political grounds. When he found the grip tightening, the professor went on the offensive and criticised the many entrenched professors opposing him as nothing more than "Professor Kangkong" (a term he coined to refer to professors who were 'empty' of knowledge at the core and were of proven incompetence). He even went as far as recommending that their 'brain drain' (leaving the university) would in fact be a 'brain gain' for the university.

To the very many who paid their last respects at his home, I wonder if there were any at all who pondered if the problem of the 80,000 odd bumiputera unemployed graduates would be with us if a vice-chancellor like the professor been given the fullest official support to restructure Universiti Malaya.