Dr. Dinesh Srivastava – The Revered Warrior

A Homage By Arvind Shrivastava OAM

A Beautiful Life to Reminisce

(4 June 1942 to 12 June 2018)

The most precious element in our lives can be associated with the Tic Toc, sound of the clock.   The time as it registers the next second leading to minutes, hours and days, is taking us nearer to the last day or last moment of our life. Time becomes more critical to a patient suffering long period of serious illnesses who along with the pains and sufferings of the illness have also to carry additional burden of unfulfilled commitments, obligations, duties and other responsibilities. Every moment becomes precious and leads one to think about the virtues of life.

This has perhaps been the situation which my dear friend and more like my brother Dr. Dinesh Srivastava OAM was forced into because of the challenging health issues, which he bravely encountered for more than three decades in his life.   In spite of all these critical conditions, he was an inspiration to people close to him. He never complained about his sufferings.     He never slowed down in doing the things he was passionate about.   His overall valuable work output was considerably more than the average weekly output of a normal person like me, in spite of the fact that three days in a week he spent in dialysis machine and recuperating from it for the last fifteen years.   All the way through my Bhabhi Ji Pratima Srivastava provided him the solid rock support and very challenging and demanding assistance, which I salute and admire from the bottom of my heart.

He was one of the only one of his kind in Melbourne who realised the importance of his mother-tongue Hindi to be passed on to the generation growing in Melbourne.   In this instance, “The charity begins at Home”, was the mission he started with.   When Piyush his son and Deepti his daughter were in school, he put them through the additional burden of learning Hindi properly.       Being a teacher himself he got them enrolled to a Hindi correspondence course from India and without giving them any choice, assisted them to learn and complete all the assignments, in addition to their usual school homework.   He also took them to Canberra for the examinations associated with the registered school curriculum.     The intelligent kids Piyush and Deepti eventually completed the Hindi course with the capabilities of reading, writing and full understanding of their mother tongue.   I believe that they were the only one in our community at that time to have acquired this capability.     In the real sense they were the quiet achievers, as they never in anyway showed off this special capability in any way.

The passion and dream of making Hindi popular grew in Dinesh Bhai and a new Hindi Niketan Association was formed with his initiative and he also was the president of the association with the objectives of bringing Hindi speaking people closer together and making Hindi more popular and accepted by the migrants with the knowledge of Hindi.   He persisted his passion and eventually succeeded in making Hindi as one of Languages other than English (LOTE) as the VCE subjects offered to the students.     He also initiated the teaching of Hindi in different suburbs of Melbourne with the assistance of volunteer knowledgeable Hindi teachers on weekends and after hours in the conveniently located schools.   Thousands of pupils have taken advantage of these facilities and I believe that there is a Primary School in Cranbourne, in which Hindi is being offered as one of the subjects to the students.

Dinesh Bhai has created an everlasting Institution which has now grown out of infancy and has taken a very successful shape, which is now being admired by not only the Indian community but also many academics and other people interested in Hindi in particular and the Indian culture in general.   He has completed and laid a very solid foundation for the growth of Hindi not only in Melbourne but also in Australia.   He also initiated the publication of Hindi Pushp, a publication in Hindi in the South Asia Times monthly News Paper which encouraged the literary people all around the world to publish their articles, stories, poems, chutkules etc.

With his heavenly departure on 12 June 2018, it will be very difficult to fill in the vacuum but the solid foundation laid by him of the Hindi learning in Australia is only going to grow bigger and bigger under the leadership of new generation capable literarians (Sahityakars) He will always be associated with anything related to Hindi in Australia for ever.

“Long Live Dinesh Bhai”, And “Rest In Peace”.

“Om Shanti, Om shanti, Om Shanti Om

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