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