Vijaysinh Parmar TNN
Shertha (Gandhinagar District): For most NRIs, a visit to their roots in Gujarat is full of nostalgia. Seldom beyond that. But, for Prof Vitthalbhai Patel, this village, located 15 km from Gandhinagar, means much more. For the past four years, since his return from the US where he worked as a professor in mathematics at Humboldt State University near San Francisco, he has been sweeping and cleaning the village’s public places like the chowk, bus stand and school. Now 71, he wakes up at 5 am and go on his bicycle with a long-handled broom and is at work for the next two hours. Everyone knows him as Vitthal Kaka. He was the first person from his village to go abroad for higher studies in California in 1965. After four decades in the US, he retired from Humboldt. He always wanted to come back to Shertha but when he finally landed here, he was pained to find his village was just a pile of garbage. “I decided to do this work which people thought to be bhangi’s work.” Some embarrassed people even asked him to employ a couple of people to do the dirty work and he politely told them that they should honour the dignity of every labour. “Because of Vitthal Kaka, the villagers have become conscious about littering in public places,” says Vikram Thakor, who runs a tea stall. Vitthal Kaka occasionally writes articles on mathematics and the American education system in reputed Gujarati magazines. But he also goes to the same school he attended as a student to teach maths because the school has not had a maths teacher for years. Kaka says: “I want to teach until my death. I even wish to die in a classroom.” Kaka has a doctorate in mathematics from Berkeley where his research guide was Prof Hans Albert Einstein, the great scientist’s eldest son. Einstein Sr had said about Gandhi: “Generations to come, it may be, will scarce believe that such one as this ever in flesh and blood walked upon this earth.” It is actually harder to imagine people like Vitthal Kaka exist today.
Friday, February 1, 2008
Ex-minister missing from May 2004!
Lalit Parmar Who Went To Witness Manmohan’s Swearing-In As PM Is Yet To Return
Vijaysinh Parmar TNN
Himmatnagar (Sabarkantha): Anjana Parmar spends most of her time near the telephone. Every time it rings, she hopes it is a call from her husband Lalit Parmar. Parmar, a former deputy minister for prohibition and Harijan welfare from 1980 to 1985 in the Madhavsinh Solanki government, has been missing since May 20, 2004. He left home telling everyone that he was going to New Delhi to witness the swearing-in of Manmohan Singh as the prime minister and see if his political fortunes could change for the better now that there was a Congress government at the Centre. That was the last his friends and family saw or heard of him. When he didn’t call up home for a week, his family telephoned Gujarat Bhavan in New Delhi, where he normally used to stay, to check his whereabouts. But the guest house officials said there was no room booked for Parmar in recent months and that nobody had seen him of late. Ten days later, a missing report was filed with the police in Himmatnagar and the news was splashed across newspapers with his photograph. Parmar was a popular person in politics and was seen as a senior Dalit leader when he went missing at the age of 64. He had even written an autobiography and couple of other books on human rights in a democracy. “He was someone who could not have had any enemies. A simple soul at heart, he was loved by everyone around him and people at large,” says close friend Karsanbhai Makwana. Parmar’s son, Sanjay, who is a fashion designer in Ahmedabad, was to get married in the middle of 2004. The marriage was postponed in the hope that Parmar would return. Finally, he got married in 2006 and the wedding invitation card was published beforehand in Gujarati newspapers in the hope that Parmar would read it and return. “Although he was not a very religious person, we searched ashrams across India thinking that he may have turned into a sadhu,” says Anjana. She does not believe he could be dead. “Someday, my husband will come back,” she says.
Vijaysinh Parmar TNN
Himmatnagar (Sabarkantha): Anjana Parmar spends most of her time near the telephone. Every time it rings, she hopes it is a call from her husband Lalit Parmar. Parmar, a former deputy minister for prohibition and Harijan welfare from 1980 to 1985 in the Madhavsinh Solanki government, has been missing since May 20, 2004. He left home telling everyone that he was going to New Delhi to witness the swearing-in of Manmohan Singh as the prime minister and see if his political fortunes could change for the better now that there was a Congress government at the Centre. That was the last his friends and family saw or heard of him. When he didn’t call up home for a week, his family telephoned Gujarat Bhavan in New Delhi, where he normally used to stay, to check his whereabouts. But the guest house officials said there was no room booked for Parmar in recent months and that nobody had seen him of late. Ten days later, a missing report was filed with the police in Himmatnagar and the news was splashed across newspapers with his photograph. Parmar was a popular person in politics and was seen as a senior Dalit leader when he went missing at the age of 64. He had even written an autobiography and couple of other books on human rights in a democracy. “He was someone who could not have had any enemies. A simple soul at heart, he was loved by everyone around him and people at large,” says close friend Karsanbhai Makwana. Parmar’s son, Sanjay, who is a fashion designer in Ahmedabad, was to get married in the middle of 2004. The marriage was postponed in the hope that Parmar would return. Finally, he got married in 2006 and the wedding invitation card was published beforehand in Gujarati newspapers in the hope that Parmar would read it and return. “Although he was not a very religious person, we searched ashrams across India thinking that he may have turned into a sadhu,” says Anjana. She does not believe he could be dead. “Someday, my husband will come back,” she says.
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