Earth Receive An Honoured Guest
By C.P Surendran
23 June, 2010
Countercurrents.org
A tribute to C Shart Chandran, documentary film maker and social activist, who died recently in an accident
I have met Sharat only three or four times. The first was in Bangalore, at the Press Club, along with a few common friends.
I am generally on my guard when I drink with bearded people, especially if they happen to be Keralites, because most bearded Malayalees I know, drink to escape themselves, not just express themselves. And escapades normally have sad and unedifying consequences.
So I was on my guard. This turned out to be unnecessary. Sharat was not the stereotypical Keralite. He was diehard pacifist.But, I soon realised that he was also more than the sum total of his parts: parts like his birthplace and language and culture. He was more a cosmic person, owing loyalty to principles and values, not to locations and
conditioning.
That is a pretty rare thing to happen to a man. Perhaps with Sharat, it was an inborn trait, though I doubt it. It is more likely that Sharat had arrived at—after a chain of experiences and protracted deliberations with himself, at a certain humanist value system, for the realization of which, so it seemed to me, he would sacrifice his life. And he would do it without any sentimentality or overt drama. The crux of his humanist philosophy was simple: he would help any one who came to him. In whatever way possible.
It was a difficult philosophy to practice though. Because it demanded not just his time and money; it demanded him. Sharat saw each friend’s—-and strangers became his friends right after fist greetings—-needs as his own.
My own experience with him was no different. Last year, I was on an assignment to report on the Kudankulam nuclear power project and was finding it difficult to breathe fresh energy into an overexposed subject, if only because some of the questions I thought were new were drawing mechanically repetitive answers both from authorities and
activists.
I was so frustrated, I was beginning to think alcohol was the solution when my friend and documentary film maker K P Sashi suggested I meet up with Sharat, who had done some significant work on the subject himself.
At Cochin, Sharat picked me up and drove me to his place where, at is small, functional studio, we spent nearly a whole night going through related international documentaries and literature. Later, he put me through to people who knew the answers to my questions. And I remember only with the deepest humility now how he repeatedly asked me if I got finally what I wanted.
Of course I did. But I got more. I got Sharat. I got to know and make friends with a most beautiful human being.How difficult it is to come across a man in the full sense of the term! That Sharat is no more, is not just a personal loss. The planet has just been put to more risk, because a fine sensibility has gone under. As Auden said of Yeats, Earth, receive an honoured guest.
