Today I had a conversation with Tun Dr Mahathir. 

This is the kind of conversation that a person doesn’t normally have. I don’t expect that many people will have it or many people would have had it.

Given everything that has happened so far, it’s far from clear that many other people will be able to have it, and so I know that it is a rare and wonderful privilege. 

I remember clearly all the things that happened. I showed up in a GrabCar to the Perdana Leadership Foundation, ten minutes before our 9:30 appointment. 

Walking in to the picturesque building, there I saw our very first national car in blue – the Saga, brought forth from one of Tun Mahathir’s pet projects. 

As I looked around, I saw that the place was grand – the paintings of prime ministers depicting Tunku Abdul Rahman, Tun Razak, Tun Hussein Onn, Tun Mahathir, and Tun Abdullah – the gallery – the chandeliers and carpeted floors broken only by gorgeous wooden balustrades that led a curved staircase up into an open space.

I stood there spellbound – I had not expected a place of such beauty. 

As I looked around, I realized that I had arrived early and it was not time for my appointment yet. But before long, my contact Adam called – and so with bated breath, I walked into the room where I would meet Tun Dr. Mahathir. 

In the morning, I had watched Khairy Jamaluddin and Shahril Hamdan’s interview of Tun Mahathir on 2X, paying attention to the questions that he had asked and all of the things along the way, which was also interesting because incidentally I’d also met both of them just the other day at a book launch featuring Kishore Mahbubani – How strange fate is and how the world seems to connect everybody in short order. 

And then I stepped in to the door that separated me from meeting Tun.

It was funny how I didn’t feel a sense of fear at all – rather just a sense that maybe this was destiny and that somehow or another, the fates had decided that this was to be my lot:

And so I stepped in and there I saw an office that I’d only seen on Google – the gigantic table hidden behind a gorgeous wooden screen and a sitting area clearly meant for entertaining diplomats, high level guests, potentially members of royalty along the way; as I walked past the screen, there I saw it all. The gigantic Quran that lay unfolded at the back. The backlighting of the entire place tastefully brought together. 3D printed Darth Vader helmets and a Stormtrooper helmet; trinkets from Japan… And eventually, as my eyes moved around the scene, there I saw the person whom I was meant to meet: 

Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad. 

There was the person that I’d only seen on television or known through the newspapers. Physically and in the flesh. 

At that point, I realized something strange – I was oddly calm. In fact, I wasn’t sure of only exactly one thing – What language I would speak to him first. 

As I gazed at the man, I extended my hand and said, “Selamat sejahtera, Tun.” 

Somehow, I had decided that it was Malay, although we immediately continued in English. 

If you’ve ever seen any of my videos, you’ll notice that what I tend to do is place a camera at the far end of a table, and then film people using the wide angle and then point a long focal length lens at them and then that makes up the entire video.

But it was then only that I saw the enormity of Dr. Mahathir’s table. I looked at it and the thing was immense. Probably five regular-sized tables, one after another, forming a U-shape in all directions with all kinds of different paraphernalia all over it, terminating only in the far corners, even as it accommodated what seemed to be infinite space.

The next couple of minutes was spent setting up and thinking about logistics, as Dr. M told me about some fascinating things like his Japan obsession, the 3D printed Darth Vader helmet, and everything in between…

…And then we began to speak.

How do you even describe a conversation like that?

A conversation where you’re sitting with someone who has led an entire country?

A chat where you think that the person who was speaking with you had the willpower to push millions of people forward in the course of a national project?

Oddly enough, for me… I’d describe it as ‘calm’, if I think about it, is kind of a strange thing to say, because one thing I never noticed is that Mahathir’s eyes are truly, in case you’ve never looked at them closely, objectively quite terrifying. 

I say terrifying in the sense that, if you look at his eyes, it appears that there is a sort of life force inside them, a vitality, a struggle to push forward which is large enough to encapsulate an entire nation. 

Looking at the man, I could see that his willpower was truly incredible, that somehow within those eyes there was a spirit so large that it could overpower dragons, conquerors, and everything in between – possibly even a demon king – even at the age of 99. These are the eyes of the the man who became the Prime Minister of Malaysia twice and was elected as the world’s oldest head of state.

Yet I was calm. 

I don’t know why, the words just arrived. They came out of me, second by second and minute by minute, as I just pondered the questions that had come about on my mind. 

If I were to describe it again, I guess I would call it a state of flow, the sort of thing that comes about when somebody is truly in their element, ready for every single challenge that may come along the way, even as I listened carefully to Tun and all the things that he shared along the way – one of the few people who could. 

How fascinating to realize that probably the most nervous person of all in that room was Tun’s assistant, Adam, who had ushered me in with a cautious look on his face, seemingly nervous at what was to come. 

A video will come up soon, in which Tun M and I will speak about affirmative action, the Malays in Malaysian society, Israel-Palestine, and the crucial question of education in our society. 

Thank you for the incredible conversation, Tun Mahathir. It was and always will remain one of my dearest memories!

It’s going to be a fun one! 🤩

It is the night before I meet Dr. Mahathir.

For those of you who didn’t know about this, welcome to yet another strange and interesting episode of my life:

Tomorrow, I will be interviewing Tun Dr. Mahathir, the 4th and 7th Prime Minister of Malaysia, for my podcast, Pathways To Excellence.

I sit here with two books in front of me, the first, The Malay Dilemma, and the next, A Doctor in the House, and I contemplate both and the way they have unquestionably shaped my life.

Dr. Mahathir was my Prime Minister when I was just born. From young, I always thought that every country had a Prime Minister; indeed, it is from him that I learned the very concept of Prime Minister itself.

For years and years, this had gone on, and I went from thinking that he was the only one who would ever occupy that position, to learning that other countries had ‘presidents’ and ‘kings’, later downgrading the man’s significance as I thought of the ‘world’ and how wide it was, moving first from thinking that Malaysia was everything to thinking that it was tiny, insignificant, hating it, coming back, making it home, and then realising that it was what we made of it.

It is fascinating how small the mind of a child is – yet, as I would later realize, how small the mind of an adult is when they fail to contemplate the significance of things that are nearby.

I never really thought too extensively what it would mean to actually encounter this person one day.

Then one day, many years after my father had died and was buried in the Sungai Petani Christian Cemetery, I found a book. My mum said that she wanted to throw it away, but somehow she didn’t, and there I saw it in its ancient form, yellowed pages and everything. I had never touched it for the longest time, for the longest time and frankly took no notice, until one day when I remember seeing an article somewhere where it said that the author had disavowed it or something of that nature.

I don’t really know though, because memory is a fragile thing, and perhaps that is just me telling a lie to myself, but what I do know is that I never really thought about it until one day, I remember thinking about my father’s untimely death after I’d come back from university, thinking about things that I wanted to do along the way, not really knowing what was on the horizon and I recall at that time that I just thought to myself that I had to increase my knowledge somehow or another, by whatever means possible.

In that year, I read like a person crazed, with no rhyme or reason, determined to fill myself up somehow with the knowledge of the entire world.

It was then, looking for things that somehow would suit me, that I found the Malay Dilemma again, and decided that now had come a time to read something that I disagreed with.

Read I did. I took up the book, I still remember, and flipped through its yellowed pages, and there I saw a mind that was deeply powerful, and strongly at work.

At that time, I remember how impressed I was at the clarity of thought, the reasoning, the issues that were brought forth, on the sheets of paper that I turned over, contemplating then in my mind, as they thought me about how how someone entirely from a different world within my own country saw the place that I live.

Thinking back, that feeling of profundity was just a feeling, a sense, an emotion, and a shock at the eloquence that I saw in the book – it would translate into a broader appreciation of society, but not just then; I would have to read it several more times over the years for that to happen.

It has been years ever since the Malay Dilemma has been published, and society has changed ever since then, but life and time have shaped my thoughts around it, and brought me to understand a little more of the world that gave rise to it, evolving my thoughts on inequality, justice, racism, and society.

As I sit here, book in hand, looking alternately at the old and faded cover, and then at Mahathir’s face on his Doctor in the House memoir, I can’t help but wonder about the person I’m going to meet tomorrow, what he’s going to be like, how the years have shaped him, how many people have come, gone, and passed through his office seeking the same inspiration with similar questions and with other thoughts that come along the way.

The man is a 99 year old this year of 2024 – the oldest person I have ever encountered in my life.

I don’t know what tomorrow will be like, but what I do know is that it will be a monumental privilege to chat with the first prime minister I had ever known, the person who, from the day of my very birth, was most responsible for spearheading the country forward, compared to so many other individuals within my geographical region.

I know of course that history is not shaped purely by the leaders, but also by individuals within their small enclaves, and that society’s movement is the collective product of our fever dreams, imaginations, and self-interest amalgamated into a single pathway that leads us forward, yet I cannot help but think about the person that I will be speaking to, and how he led this small part of the world forward in the context of the history of the world that I have always known.

I cannot help but wonder what I will say tomorrow, which even now is something unknown to me. The questions, they alternate from one minute to the next, percolating, coalescing, fading away, and getting replaced with new ones… And as I reach the end of this night, all I can really think about is a sense of wonder about the person who shaped Malaysia, what he will have to say, and how my life will be transformed and I am confident that it will be a transformative conversation.

At this time, I think of my father and how he might have encountered this book. Curious, wondering, eager to understand the world.

As far as I know, at the age that he had bought it, it would have been in the very first year of Tun Mahathir’s premiership and I suppose that he would have been the same age that I am now.

Somehow this conversation feels like it was fated. A gift passed down from heaven from which my father smiles, looking at destiny itself being fulfilled, his son coming to meet one of the leaders of our nation.

Loved, feared, hated, admired, but ever controversial.

That is Tun Mahathir, and that is the person I will meet tomorrow.

It is a wonderful feeling to think about that privilege, and to realise that it is a complex one. That is the last thought that I will chronicle, bringing this feeling of fatedness into the morning.