Thread by @rafiziramli

Have you ever had a friendship so intense that it influenced your life so much?

Well, I did.

Much of what I did since he died was living a life that he would have wanted.

This is a thread about a beautiful friendship that was taken away too abruptly.

The photo was taken somewhere in Durham in late autumn 1998, about 2 months after Reformasi broke out in Malaysia.

I still occasionally smoke then - was an on-off social smoker ha3.

Ben left Malaysia en route to Germany and spent a few weeks with me in the UK.

I first met Ben (Adlan Benan Omar) in MCKK in 1990. He was my debating captain and coach.

He went to Abingdon School in Oxfordshire for A-Levels and became the head boy, then read History and Law at Cambridge University.

He founded @UKEC and co-founded @KalsomMovement

We came from two different worlds with hardly anything in common.

He was from a privileged family in PJ, I was from a working-class family in Kemaman.

The only common grounds were our skill as debaters and our love for history.

He coached my team and we went on to win the Prime Minister's Cup in 1992 when I was 15.

Since I was 14, he wrote regularly to me from Oxfordshire (then from Cambridge), at least once a month.

Those days there were no emails or WhatsApp, so it took a lot of efforts to write.

I wrote back (again, took a lot of efforts to send airmail from Kuala Kangsar to Oxfordshire).

We discussed anything under the sun in our letters: what I was doing in school, my disagreements with how things were going.

He always steered the correspondence towards "duty".

Once he quoted @NeilFinn's lines that had a great impact on my young life (I was 15):

You're still so young to travel so far
Old enough to know who you are
Wise enough to carry the scar
Without any blame, there's no one to blame

At another time, he wrote a variation of Longfellow's poem:

Long ago I shot my bow
Where it fell I didn't know
Much later in a huge great oak
I picked it up still unbroke

It was his symbolism that I should be an arrow that goes far and remain unbroken at the end of the flight

I grew up with a deep sense of duty being cultivated by a mentor thousands of miles away.

I got an Esso scholarship to the USA before I sat for SPM and was counter-offered by PETRONAS to go to the UK right after I sat for SPM.

I chose UK predominantly because Ben was in the UK.

By the time I was in the UK, we became more of colleagues and less of senior-junior.

He was @UKEC 's first chairman and I was pulled into UKEC's orbit almost instantly, eventually becoming the chairman for two terms (1997 to 1999).

Reformasi broke out during my chairmanship.

At every junction of my life up to then, the big decisions of my life were influenced by him.

My choice to study in the UK, my involvement in student activism.

When Reformasi took place in 1998, Ben once again pulled me into his yet-another adventure.

That was how I was involved with @KEADILAN since 1998 despite not having much ambition nor interest in politics.

It was always him who was the politician, I was a supportive friend who had gone through much together that I would have done it just to keep the friendship alive.

Ben was in the pioneering EXCO of PKR's @AMKMalaysia

I eventually joined the EXCO and both Ben & I were in the party's Supreme Council in 2003. I was the youngest Supreme Council member in 2003 at 26.

When @anwaribrahim was released in 2004, I really wanted to move on.

I felt that I had done my due; mostly to honour a friend and his adventure. I didn't have a political ambition then (as is now), so I had no business being in politics.

Ben eventually relented and we moved separate ways.

He was already ill with diabetes by then.

Ben eventually succumbed to his illness and passed away on 24 January 2008, about 2 months before the watershed 2008 GE.

I was around him in his last months and spent the nights keeping him company (with other friends).

Between 2004-07 we spent time coaching MCKK debating teams

With a benefit of hindsight, I always wonder if I had not chosen to walk out in 2004, whether Ben would have lived longer.

Politics was in his blood. Our collective decision to walk away from politics could have impacted his will to fight his illness.

I would never know.

His death once again altered the path I took.

First, I reconnected with my future wife whom I last met in 1992 when I was 15.

She dropped a message to console me since it was obvious from my blog posts then that I was a complete wreck.

We eventually got married 3 years later.

After his death, it became clear that I didn't want him to die in vain. He forfeited everything that he could have had to pursue an ideal; that a progressive multiracial Malaysia was possible.

From my corporate ivory tower, I realised that I had to live a life that was his.

So I slowly unwound from my corporate career and my path crossed again with @anwaribrahim in 2009 when I became his de facto chief of staff at the economic office.

His sale pitch to me then was I would not have to become a politician. He just needed me to help run the policies.

Obviously, it didn't turn out as planned.

Before long, I found myself on the stage as a forum panellist and it wasn't long before I was brought in officially as PKR's Director of Strategies.

Then I stumbled on NFC scandal in 2010 and was handcuffed for the 1st time in 2011 ha3

Before long, I accumulated an impressive list of court cases and prison sentences.

By the time Malaysians voted in 2018, I had been sentenced to 6 years prison (if served consecutively) and had 4+ criminal cases waiting.

It was a far cry from the life I envisioned for myself.

At the end of it, I felt that I had accomplished what I set out to do - which was to honour a dead friend, the ideals by which he lived his life and the friendship.

Although he is no longer around, it could have easily been me cheering him on the ceramah stage if he was alive

I always wonder how it would have been if he is around.

He would definitely be an MP (either in Penang - paternal side or Negeri Sembilan - maternal side).

He would have dazzled the public with his oratory skills and intellect.

I wouldn't have existed if he was alive.

He would have formed a formidable team with the younger PKR MPs, people like @n_izzah

Malaysians would have had a charismatic intellectual as his generation's leader.

Things would have been so different.

But I also knew that I couldn't go on living his life.

Eventually, it became clear that I had done what I wanted to do for him and it was time to move on.

When I decided to move on, I was so at peace with myself and my life. And happy.

Throughout his life in the 17 years I knew him, I never really told him how much he made a difference to my life.

That most of the biggest pivots of my life were due to him.

I never got the chance to say it and I never recovered from it.

So my advice - if you do have someone who means so much to you, tell him/her every day how much he/she means to you.

Don't wait until he/she is gone before you start thinking about how to make it up.

Life is short and a pure friendship is very rare.

I won't tweet anything poignant for the next few months, promise ha3.

I hope you guys out there can learn a thing or two - why it's worth it to nurture long-lasting friendships with the people you care most.

Owh my wife and I also named our only son after him.

Hence our precious little Ben.

And he reminds me of Ben every now and then.