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I never talked about it, because a) no one ever asked and b) he was just, well, the boy-next-door back then.
It was in 1988, four years before he died. Location: KL. Specific location, I am not saying. :)
Oh yes I was a big fan. I played his cassette tapes all the time. But when he moved into our neighbourhood, we somehow weren't all agog about it. I even invited him to my birthday party once. He didn't come. But of course he couldn't, and I understood.
He didn't live in our housing estate for long. We were all a rather close-knit community there, because there were less than 80 houses in that Taman, but exactly when Sudir moved in, and when he moved out, no one knew.
He also kept to himself a lot but occasionally when neighbours caught sight of him going into or out of his house, he was a jolly chap, ever smiling and friendly to kids. He was just your average neighbourly neighbour. Soon we all stopped being curious about him and treated him like one of us.
I'd being reading a lot of things about Sudirman since he was posthumously awarded his Datukship last month, 17 years after he died.
I remember picking up the Malay Mail on the afternoon after he died and seeing the headline "Sudir Is Dead". I remember my mum thinking that it was a disrespectful headline, to term him as "Dead". She would have preferred "Sudirman Passes Away" or something like that, knowing my mum, full of decorum.
Today she terms his posthumous Datukship as pointless, especially since it's been almost two decades.
Many people say many things about Sudir's Datukship, and about Sudir.
It strikes me as odd why people who don't know anything about someone would be the ones to talk about that someone the most. We never hear Kay talk about him. We never hear Atai talk about him. Or Noor. Whatever memories they have of him, they respect him and his memory and his family enought to keep those memories to themselves.
It was only recently that Sudir's sister and lyricist Habsah Hassan went public with the real account of the circumtances surrounding Sudir's death. I think it is a good thing because finally all the hearsay and slander can be silenced. Those who still insist to say bad things about Sudir are those who do not have iman and therefore should not be entertained.
So, what do I know about Asia's No. 1 performer? Huh, what do you think. Would I tell YOU?
