We were about to put this issue to bed when we learned of the passing of Prof. Dato’ Shaharil Talib, one of SEASREP’s (Southeast Asian Studies Regional Exchange Program) four founders, who gave it its name, designed an ambitious blueprint for the advancement of Southeast Asian studies in the region, and helped us sort out problems in our early years in his inimitable and special way. Shaharil was committed to the idea of Southeast Asia not as a conglomeration of states brought together by common security and other interests, but as a place bound by seas and rivers, free of boundaries well before globalization came in vogue, and as peoples who were diverse yet similar to each other in countless ways. To him the Bugis epitomized the very idea of this dynamic region, connected rather than divided, and rich in intangible culture that wealth could never buy. Shaharil saw the region visually and in full color, not in drab black-and-white texts. Southeast Asia excited him no end.

Shaharil marched to his idea of Southeast Asia. SEASREP’s mission, to promote the study of the region by Southeast Asians in the region, was Shaharil’s baby. In our very first meeting in Kuala Lumpur in 1994, Shaharil impressed me-the fledgling in the group of four (the other two being Taufik Abdullah, then head of LIPI, and Charnvit Kasetsiri, soon-to-be rector of Thammasat University)-with the range and passion of his ideas. There was no limit to Shaharil’s imagination and brainstorming with him literally meant a deluge of ideas. At first glance some of his proposals appeared out of this world, but if you heard the man out you would see the logic of his thinking. His unconventional approach to things was a constant source of attraction, especially as we were trying to build an organization that had been attempted before but somehow fizzled out.

Our original blueprint for SEASREP consisted of ten programs, ranging from academic exchanges to shared libraries. We secured funding for only four of the ten, not a bad achievement for an organization seeking to navigate uncharted waters. Of these four, most important to us were the language training program and support for MA/PhD study within the region-programs that were clearly geared toward budding scholars, young Southeast Asians desiring to learn beyond their immediate setting and about the broader world of Southeast Asia. As it turned out, these were our most successful programs, creating in the process a network of scholars across the region, mostly in universities and research institutes, who have kept ties alive.

As in any endeavor of academics, we initially grappled with definitions: what do we mean by Southeast Asian studies? Is a Southeast Asian expert on her or his country automatically a ‘Southeast Asianist’? Our vision of Southeast Asian studies by Southeast Asians in and from the region necessarily had a practical consideration. Having been trained abroad (Monash University, Cornell, and SOAS), the four of us were aware of the increasingly prohibitive cost of graduate study outside the region. But this practical consideration was not our principal guide. It was the thought, rather, of a multi-faceted space of vigorous student and academic exchanges that moved us, where students would learn the languages of their neighbors from their neighbors, In between meetings I would seek his advice, which he gave freely and thoughtfully, and over the years our friendship developed. To others but always in my presence, he liked to recount my first meeting with Charnvit in Thammasat’s newly built Rangsit campus, when I was (wrongly) assigned to Charnvit’s room, which Charnvit just happened to occupy in a carefree manner of dress. (It was night time.) That first encounter remains enmeshed in my memory, thanks to Shaharil’s constant retelling. Over cigarettes (we are former smokers) he and I shared many a story, about the past and the present, about others and ourselves. Even after a new Board came in, Shaharil and I kept in touch. He kept himself occupied with the University of Malaya Asia-Europe Institute and, after retirement, continued to work on archives relating to Malaysia’s economic history. We were troubled when Shaharil got cancer. But he fought his way out of the illness as best as he could. In conversations he would write down his thoughts when speaking tired him out. In my last visit in 2016, Shaharil reverted to his longtime interest in Sabah, and in an email exchange that followed, emphasized how the meaning of padjak-repeatedly mentioned in the 1878 Sulu Agreement between Sultan Mohammed Jamalul Alam and Austrian Gustavus Baron de Overbeck and Englishman Alfred Dent (representing a British company)-morphed from ‘lease’ to ‘grant’ in Maxwell and Gibson (1924). I again witnessed the historian at work, as he discussed the original agreement in jawi, followed by the official Romanized version produced by the Colonial Office, and then the official English translation. Shaharil hinted at a fourth version still in the works. In all the 1878 Sulu Agreement was, in his words, like “an Alfred Hitchcock thriller.” Even in illness Shaharil saw history as real-life drama.

The man just would not allow the cancer to set him back completely. In typical Shaharil fashion, he carved out a new chapter in his life in a farm where he grew durian and other fruits. My one regret is that all I saw of his farm were photographs he shared. I never got to try Shaharil-grown durian, which he boasted about. Part of his Christmas greeting last year included a lament about how “the rains literally deflowered all the trees and we did not have fruits this season.”

Shaharil ended our last exchange with a request that I extend his greetings to “all the other fellow katipunans whose numbers I do not have.” And that is how I want to remember our man in black, an endearment coined by Taufik because of Shaharil’s uni-toned wardrobe-a true Southeast Asian, a Southeast Asianist to the core, a katipunero, a kindred spirit, a fellow historian, a dear, dear friend.

Maria Serena I. Diokno
RJSEAS Editor