Hani Mohsin Hanafi

“Carikan saya yang solehah dan sexy,” he said in his last telephone conversation with me two months before he died.
I had asked him if he needed help in the dating department. He was talking about renovations of the front gate of the Bukit Antarabangsa double-storey semi-detached house that he had been staying in since his divorce from Tiara.
I told him what was the point of all the renovation if he’s living there alone.
“You kan tahu I tak pandai nak mengurat perempuan. Dulu tu pun, Tiara yang mengurat I. Serina pun sama,” he had said. Then came my “Nak saya tolong Carikan?”question.
He’s gone.
Hani Mohsin Mohd Hanafi collapsed and died at the LCC Terminal at Sepang on July 25, 2006. He was making his way up north to spend a weeklong holiday with his one pride and joy, Hani Karmila.
It’s been two weeks now but I still cannot get myself to refer to him as “arwah” or “allahyarham”. Khairizan, one of our closest friends, said “Macam dia tak mati kan?”
Mohsin and I were housemates for some five years in the mid-1980s. My brother joined us much later. I knew him before he found fame as an actor and television host. He was then working in a direct marketing company at one of the shoplots behind Jalan Tuanku Abdul Rahman.
My brother and I were like elder siblings to him. He never had any brothers or sisters of his own. Through him, I know most of his MCKK and ITM friends: Khairizan, Pok Man, Chuck, Karai, Maliki, Zahar, Azam and many more.
We, his friends, were his family. And these were the friends that helped prepare his jenazah for burial. These were the same friends who held a three-day tahlil at the Bukit Antarabangsa home after the funeral.
Our last SMS was on his birthday on June 18. Since I moved out of the Bangsar house, I never missed wishing him happy birthday. “You never forget. Thank you, sis,” was his reply.
We don’t meet as often as we should have but we have each other in mind.
He’d call me whenever he’s stuck with an English word. “You kan my walking dictionary,” he said.
I missed his laughter. I missed his smiles. I missed his goofy ways too.
I didn’t realize how famous he had gotten until I went to his house for the funeral. The articles I read on him, almost all quoting his entertainment industry friends, said the same thing: Mohsin orang yang baik.
I cannot deny that fact. I would think he is every mother’s dream of a son or a mother-in-law’s dream of a son-in-law. A filial son, he looked after his ailing mom until she passed away two years ago. It wasn’t without complaints but he persevered.
Whenever the mother was hospitalized, he would ask us to visit. Once, I spent the entire day at the hospital with the mom, him, Mila and the servant.
My own mother urged Mohsin to re-marry someone who can take care of him and his mother but he told her that he would have to find someone from outside the entertainment industry.
“Tapi saya tak ada kawan2 kat luar dari industri hiburan ni,” he had told her.
Once, he felt so embarrassed that he had let out the fact that he had a crush on a very famous singer that he had sent her flowers on Valentine’s Day. The infatuation, however, led to nowhere because the singer told him, “You’re too late.” She was already spoken for then.
His father was worried that he would get himself entangled with all the negative elements associated with the entertainment industry – drugs, drinking and women.
“Pakcik harap kamu dapat nasihatkan dia. Bila dia dah terkenal nanti, my fear is that fame would get to his head. It is your duty as his sister and brother to keep his two feet on the ground,” his father told my brother and me. We never had to do that. Mohsin was a well-grounded person.
The only weaknesses I know of him were that he smoked far too much and that he is notorious for his tardiness.
Of all the newspaper articles written on him, the one quoting Raja Azura was the only one that described the man that I know. She spoke of his tardiness, one that his friends from outside the entertainment industry would fondly remember.
At his funeral, my brother recalled telling him about including all of us when he writes his memoirs. Well, I guess that will not happen.
For now, we have agreed to share our moments with him among ourselves.