Manas Ranjan Mahapatra, Puri, 24 March 2024
I met Param Shivam by accident at Srinagar while holding a workshop for children.
I was doing a creative writing and illustration workshop for children. Eminent children’s illustrator Hakim Ghulam Ahmed and author Ghulam Nabi Atash were the resource persons. Suddenly, a gentleman entered and sat quietly.
I asked him, “Sir, are you a parent of any of these children participating in this workshop?”
“No”, he replied.
“Then?”, I asked.
He introduced himself by saying, “I am Param Shivam. CRPF Commandant here.”
I was a bit afraid. Has anything gone wrong?
But he was smiling. I requested him to speak to the participating children and teachers. He spoke so well that I was amazed.
That was the beginning of our interaction. We built a friendship for years. He was a good poet and thinker. He and his friend Munna Singh established a library for CRPF Jawans.
So enthusiastic was he that he held a dinner meeting with poetry at his residence for the poets from North East attending the Book Fair. I eventually chaired that session.
We were facing some resentment from the local publishers in the book fair . One day, he organised a visit of the entire CRPF troupe to the book fair and bought books worth a few lakhs.
“Look, these people were once shooting at you and they are now buying books”, I told the erring publisher friends.
Param Shivam was of Tamil origin but was settled at Jabalpur in MP. He was educated in MP and later in various parts of the country including JNU.
Later, he was posted in Motihari in Bihar. He discovered that the house allotted to him for his residence was the house where the legendary author George Orwel was born and brought up. He persuaded his Department to grant it the status of a national monument and was successful in his noble non-political mission.
People with non-religious and free minds like Param Shivam are very rare these days. I don’t find a Param Shivam in the crowd of power hungry people these days….
