My condolences to BabuG's family.
On Mon, Mar 9, 2015 at 1:59 AM, Josh Lim jamesjoshualim@yahoo.com wrote:
Hi Viswa,
Thank you for this stirring tribute. Wikimedia Philippines and the Filipino Wikimedia community would like to share its deepest condolences and we hope that his family will be okay in this most trying of times. He will be sorely missed by both Malayalam and non-Malayalam editors alike.
Regards,
Josh
Wiadomość napisana przez ViswaPrabha (വിശ്വപ്രഭ) vp2007@gmail.com w
dniu 5 mar 2015, o godz. 23:07:
Dear Wikimedians all over the world,
One of our stalwarts at ml Wikimedia community, Wikiuser:BabuG https://ml.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Babug ( https://ml.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Babug) expired yesterday night.
Despite having paralyzed due to a severe stroke and severely affected by several subsequent health problems, he was guided to Wikipedia by his
son,
Dr. Ajay, another prominent Malayalam Wikipedian, as a possible remedy to escape perpetual loneliness.
His real world name was G. Balachandran.He was born on 14th October 1938
in
a small village off North Parur, Ernakulam District, Kerala, the Southernmost state of India.He joined the Armed Forces Engineering
College
and then continued to serve the Indian Armed forces for long many years.
He started contributing to Wikimedia, particularly to Malayalam
Wikipedia,
in the year 2008.
His initial contributions to Malayalam Wikipedia were based upon a pulp-converted digital Encyclopedia, released by the Government through GFDL licence then. He continued to create even more full-featured
articles
on his own, later. By 2014 October 18 - the day he edited last in Wikipedia- he had 1935 full-blown articles initiated and expanded by himself in ml.wikipedia.org. Besides, he also contributed more than 350 images to Wikimedia commons and a handsome amount of contributions to Wikisource, Wikidata and Wiktionary.
He always attributed his renewed energy and life's aspirations to the Wikimedia mission, for having returned to a meaningful life after a
20-year
long and frustrating solitude while constrained to an immobile chair.
Ever
since 2008, he stood up and started walking and moving around. His was an extreme example for us in Malayalam WP to showcase how Wikipedia can
change
lives.
In almost all our Wikipedia Outreach sessions, we utilized this great example to motivate and excite the newcomers to WP.
Tory Read mentioned about BabuG thus, in a document http://cis-india.org/internet-governance/india-chronicles.pdf, a
review
on the state of Indian Wikimedia Communities, in 2011:
G. Balachandran, a septuagenarian who lives outside of Ernakulum in
Kerala
state, said that working on Malayalam Wikipedia helped him recover
after a
stroke left him paralyzed. “He’s much sharper now,” said his wife
Jagadamma
K. “He’s made a lot of new friends, and that’s been good for his
health.”
For us in Malayalam Wikipedia, today is a black day, for having lost a great beacon on our voyage to ultimate openness and freedom in knowledge and wisdom.
Yet, we feel, BabuG has made his life stamped immortal for ever and has shown us the pathway we should follow in continuing our humble contributions to the ultimate cause of mankind.
-ViswaPrabha (On behalf of Malayalam Wikimedia Community) http://ml.wikipedia.org _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at:
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JAMES JOSHUA G. LIM Bachelor of Arts in Political Science Class of 2013, Ateneo de Manila University Quezon City, Metro Manila, Philippines
jamesjoshualim@yahoo.com mailto:jamesjoshualim@yahoo.com | +63 (915) 321-7582 Facebook/Twitter: akiestar | Wikimedia: Sky Harbor http://about.me/josh.lim http://about.me/josh.lim _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe