By Vishal Bhatia
The tragic news of Harish Chandola’s passing away came as quite a blow.
Way back in 2010, while on a military assignment at Joshimath, I met Mr Chandola. This was the best thing that happened to me at that time. Mr Chandola lived in a beautiful house midway between Joshimath and Auli. It was ethnically designed and got made by him. I visited him once, fell in love with the house and the man and would visit him on weekends, often, whenever he was in town. He used to travel to Delhi often to visit his family.
He was an eminent journalist of the era gone by and was the last word on Sino-India relations. Among so many media houses he worked for, the most notable was The London Times.
An incident narrated by Mr Chandola was about the early days of his journalistic career. Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, the then PM, was visiting Dehradun and was lodged at the Circuit House. Mr Chandola was covering the PM’s visit on behalf of the media house he was working for at that time. Being young, he could not afford any accommodation in the town, so he pitched a small tent in a hidden corner of the Circuit House lawns and slept the night. The PM, an early riser, while taking a walk in the lawns saw the tent and peeped inside to see who it was on that cold winter morning. Mr Chandola was surprised to be woken up by the Prime Minister to a good morning. Thereafter, he was the Prime Minister’s guest throughout the tour. The Prime Minister ensured Mr Chandola travelled with him wherever he went.
Dom Moraes (married to Leela Naidu, once described as the most beautiful woman in the world) though a poet, wrote a book in which he shared an interesting incident about his famous father, Frank Moraes, who refused to toe the line of the owner of a newspaper that was edited by him. It was very interestingly narrated by Dom. I happened to narrate this to Mr Chandola once during our weekend meeting. Mr Chandola in his inimitable anglicised accent told me… ‘Yes, yes Col Bhatia, it happened in the drawing room of so and so at Mumbai, even I was there…’ That was the stature of Mr Chandola, the man and the journalist he was.
Rest in peace Mr Chandola, we shall always remember you with fondness and miss you.
