By RP Nailwal
Dehradun, 26 Mar: With the passing away of veteran journalist Harish Chandola, Uttarakhand has lost a gentle man of substance. He was perhaps the only English language journalist from Uttarakhand, maybe from the rest of the country, who reported the developments in the turbulent North-Eastern states for the reputed English national daily, The Times of India, in the sixties and remained there for a sufficiently long period of time before getting a reporting assignment in a West Asian country.
In the mid-nineties, when we were together at a HNB Garhwal University seminar, I came to personally know about him. During that two-day interaction, I can still recall how, as a senior fellow journalist, he did not hesitate a bit to tell me that, being a TOI senior staffer, I ought to have pursued my career in the national capital only, rather than moving over to Uttarakhand region. However, at that time, he was also engaged in building a small house near Auli in Joshimath, where he had eventually decided to settle before finally leaving New Delhi where his wife from Nagaland was also staying with him.
Even though I did not meet him for years thereafter, I was aware how, during the fading years of his life, Chandola exhibited great concern for the well being of the Uttarakhand people and sometimes wrote about the woes of hill folk in some local papers. Being a frequent visitor to the Vasant Vihar residence of Hargovind Dabral, IAS (Retd), who was District Magistrate of district Chamoli in the seventies, he used to discuss many issues with him about the basic problems of Garhwal. At one time, I met him there also as Dabral happens to be my brother-in–law. I must say that Chandola remained distressed to the very end about the plight of the hill folk despite, in his opinion, the formation of a separate state. May God rest his soul in peace!
