Tear: The Most Powerful Disobedient Dear

Subhas Chandra Pattanayak

Now I know how powerful is tear.

The dear drop that lessens the burden of all unbearable loads of sorrow is so disobedient that it does not listen any command to stop.

And, in the drops of tear, as my inner self fails to know how not to be overwhelmed, the spectrums from the mobile phone of my dearest friend Prasanta Patnaik delivers me his sobs, as he too is unable to obstruct his tears on loss of a very precious life that he had tried his best to stand with.

Nirakar Puhan.

So smiling, so friendly, so young, so effervescent, so charming; yet so humble, so dutiful, and entirely so one with his responsibilities, the massive intricacies of visual editing!

What a loss, personally, fraternally, socially, motherlandly!

We media persons in Orissa are vulnerable to professional hazards, often beyond endurance.

On-duty accidents, on-duty attacks, on-duty acquisition of infections like brain malaria while working in high-risk terrains, on-duty inability to attend to clamant health issues et cetera play havoc upon our lives.

But, when the media house owners never care, and corporate-class-recalcitrance to necessities of health care of media persons in employment or in contract, is becoming more resolute and defined, the government is sitting idle and nonchalant.

The high cost, rather the uncontrolled cost of treatment is making the matter worse for the media persons, when the State is afraid of forcing the owners of media organizations to bear the cost of treatment of their scribes and cameramen but for whom their profit fetching machines could have never run, and but for whom democracy could have collapsed.

Media Unity for Freedom of Press, the united forum of media persons of Orissa beyond the boundaries of trade unions, has, since it inception, been trying to convince the authorities that there is urgent necessity of a live and functioning fund for taking care of the forth pillar in times of dire need.

The State is yet to wake up from its slumber. Had it not been so, Puhan might have not breathed his last so soon, in so young an age. He was only 28.

MUFP stands bereft of a very promising, active member.

Starting his career with Naxatra TV, he was gaining high esteem day by day, everyday, as visual editor of S.TV Samachar.

MUFP was trying its best to organize whatever support was possible on its part.

But, acute pancreatitis, the cause of 15% which is never known to medical science, but suspected in his case to be an after effect of a trauma he had in an accident on duty two years ago, became too obstinate to be tamed, and, the dear young man passed away within a fortnight of hospitalization, last night, leaving behind a recently married wife and the shock-struck paternal as well as maternal families and a large number of friends, admirers, colleagues and a fraternity that shall be missing him for ever.

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