SYED Mohammad Ali, MBE, barrister-at-law, saw his life drawing to a close on Wednesday of last week. You could look back at his age — he was all of seventy-seven -- and you could tell yourself that he had arrived at a point where mortality would as a rule of nature catch up with him. And yet you would not do that, for in Ali there was that spark which gives some men their vigour, the intellectual vitality that informs their being.

He had come forth with the first phase of his memoirs and was on his way to beginning work on the second. Had he lived, had the sum total of his life come to us through the printed word, we could well have recreated for ourselves a world of which Ali was a part, an era which might have touched us all, just.

The most important part of the story here is that Syed Mohammad Ali was part of a generation that saw great occurrences rounding the bend of history, an era of men and women always ready and willing to give of themselves to the world.

His father, the well-known politician and orator Syed Badrudduja, had decided, even before Ali was born, that he would name his son after Mohammad Ali Jauhar. It is said that on the day he was born, his father's well-wishers asked him; "Has Mohammad Ali come into life?" A beaming Badrudduja nodded ayes.

As a child, Ali sat on Rabindranath Tagore's lap. As a young man, he once piled question upon question on Huseyn Shaheed Suhrawardy, so much so that the latter asked him about his background. Ali told him. Suhrawardy smiled. Syed Badrudduja's son, yes. That explained the questions.

There was an intellectual flame that burned in him. He was, if anyone could spare a moment to observe him in his early youth, destined to be either a scholar or a politician. His record marks in Islamic History and Culture from Calcutta University would soon lead to his move to what was then East Pakistan in the early 1950s.

Ali identified with the Language Movement of 1952 and even suffered a spate of incarceration for his reluctance to compromise on an issue he shared with other young men. Come the 1960s. And Ali would find himself in Britain, busy preparing for a legal career. The sheer energy in him propelled him into the classroom as much as it did into activities outside it.

As president of the Pakistan Youth Federation in the United Kingdom, Ali brought intellect and class into his dealings with people. In the early 1970s, back in Dhaka, he shared in the sentiments of other Bengalis that Pakistan perhaps had outlived its utility in East Bengal.

As March 1971 powered ahead with the strident, purposeful calls for an end to military rule, Ali wrote the scathing editorials in The People newspaper that the soldiers certainly did not miss. On March 25, the Pakistan army torched the offices of The People.

Syed Mohammad Ali could well have carved a niche for himself in Bangladesh's politics. That he did not do so and yet remained in touch with the changing fortunes of the country from distant London was a sign of the essential political being he was and would be till the end. His friends, all lawyers, all of whom had studied for the Bar with him, would rise to prominence in Bangladesh. Ali made his choice.

In Britain, it was the Labour Party that appealed to him. He had no sympathy for the Tories; and if he had any reservations about New Labour, he kept them to himself. Had the times been different, he would probably be in the House of Commons. That he could seek elective office and indeed come by it was proved by his election as a local councillor. The majority of those who voted for him were whites. His appeal was across the board.

Syed Mohammad Ali was founder-president of the South London Bangladesh Welfare Association. He served as chairperson of the National Council of Bangladeshi Organisations in the UK. He was a disciplined man. A deep religiosity, soaked in liberality, underlined his moral values. His conversations, substantiated by a profundity of knowledge brought on by avid reading, gave him star quality in a social ambience. There was a raconteur in him, one who could weave the sombre into the humorous, and the other way round, in patterns of erudition.

In death, Syed Mohammad Ali leaves us all diminished. And yet he informs us of the beauty of living in energy and then passing on, after we have put our books and our papers in order on the old familiar shelves.

Syed Badrul Ahsan Is Editor, Current Affairs, The Dally Star. E-mail: bahsantareq@yahoo.co.uk