Danapal Govind: The Journalist Who Mused About Death … Then ‘Planned’ For It

Danapal Govind: The Journalist Who Mused About Death … Then ‘Planned’ For It

One afternoon in the early 90s, Danapal Govind sat bemused at his desk after returning from a graveyard in his Johor Baru town in southern Malaysia.  He wasn’t there to lay flowers or water plants at a tomb. He actually went to check out a post box that stood in the center of the cemetery. 

If you’re wondering who was receiving letters there, so was Danapal. After some thought, he began writing on the blinking screen of the terminal that sat atop the desk of his newspaper office, noting the place he just visited was “dead right” and correctly observing that “the dead don’t write”. 

When I read his story in the New Straits Times the next day, while sitting at my own desk at The Star newspaper bureau in the same town, I had to marvel at two things. Danapal had beaten the competition by sniffing out a story in the most unlikely of places. Topping that was how he’d spun his yarn, with a liberal sprinkling of dark humor.

Danapal Govind: Witty to the end.

But death always seemed to be on Danapal’s mind — if not the end of life itself, then at least the discussions around it and humanity’s approach towards it.

Decades after that postbox-in-the-graveyard story, he mused about the Indian ritual of sprinkling rice grains on a newly-wed couple as a blessing, as well as on the dead as a mark of respect.

“Rice grain loses its capacity to sprout/germinate once it is dehusked,” he wrote in a Facebook post on August 16, 2024. “Going by that logic, shouldn’t the couple be showered with padi which has ‘life’, instead of rice grains, which is ‘dead’?” 

Thus, it wasn’t surprising that a man so preoccupied with the question of existence and all that we do during our time on earth would sort of “plan” his own exit from it. 

Fifty years apart: Danapal at 70 and 20.

Having checked the bucket list he had built over the years — aiding wildlife conservation (with a UNDP job that took him to some of the world’s most remote places); becoming a foreign correspondent (with The Khmer Times in Phnom Penh); and tending to his garden whenever he liked (an activity that dominated much of his senior years) — Danapal had little left to yearn.

It was with this mindset that he dismissed dialysis for his failing kidneys. Instead, he chose ayurvedic care, which he knew would neither really help nor delay the inevitable. 

It was his way of setting his own time of departure and also minimizing chaos for those around him, said Lazarus Rokk, a long-time friend, comrade-in-journalism and the closest out-of-blood relative that Danapal had.

“He didn’t want to be hooked to machines and put his loved ones through inconveniences,” said Rokk of Danapal. He and Danapal had married into the same family. When the two pairs met for lunch once a month at a mall, the wives — or sisters — would go browsing for stuff, leaving the guys to talk shop. It was during these sessions that Rokk learned that Danapal was quietly planning for his death, after being diagnosed with an end-stage renal condition.

Being a smoker, Danapal did not think he’d even cross the age of 55. Yet, at his passing on September 23rd, 2024, he was three months away from turning 78.

“He had done everything that he always wanted to do,” Rokk told me. “His philosophy was: ‘Why live so long? You don’t want to outlast your friends and be lonely’. He had his life, a good life, and he was quite satisfied. He was ready to go.”

And Danapal left as he wished, holding his wife’s hand, and with his son, who had rushed back from Singapore, by his side. “He went on his own terms,” said Rokk.

The Journalist, Dad, Grandpa, Nature Advocate And Social Citizen

Danapal Govindasamy was born on December 20, 1946, slightly more than a year after World War II.

He attended high school in his Muar birth town, a two-hours drive from the Johor state capital Johor Baru. He did so well in school that his first job was that of a teacher, which he began in 1969 at the Maharani English Medium School in Johor.

Danapal with the class he taught at the Maharani English School in Muar at the age of 20.

But after three years of teaching, Danapal felt he was destined for something else. In 1972, he enrolled in a distant learning journalism course with the London School of Journalism. That same year, he landed the job that would be his real calling: Reporting for the New Straits Times, or NST.

Danapal in his early reporting days

The 1970s newsrooms were filled with the clatter of typewriters and even-louder voices of journalists on the phone, demanding hard answers from their sources. It was the era of hard deadlines  — when stories had to be written and edited in time for the presses to roll and send out hard copies of newspapers to the streets the next morning. The dotcom age of 24/7 news cycles wouldn’t arrive for another four decades. 

“Those were the days of getting the scoop, getting your byline on the front page,” recalled Arasu Kumarasamy, who ran The Star’s Johor Baru bureau in the 80s against Danapal’s NST team. The two newspaper offices were on opposite sides of a road and “competition was fierce”, Arasu told me.

But once the stories were filed, Danapal would walk over for a chat or chai. Sometimes, the rivals would meet for lunch at a hilltop Indian restaurant that served the best fried fish and chicken curry in town.

Arasu said Danapal was “friendly, smart, witty and fun to be with”, as well as charming with a mop of silver hair.

That debonair look of Danapal — thickly-mustachioed, with the top two buttons of his shirt undone, sleeves rolled to the elbows and glasses resting above his forehead when he wasn’t reading — is seared into the memory of NST reporter Yusof Taib, who likens his ex-boss at the Johor Baru bureau as an “Indian Tom Selleck”.

The “Indian Tom Selleck”

As one of the younger members of Danapal’s crew, Yusof says he had some of the best moments of his career working under the veteran as they navigated NST’s coverage of misbehavior in the Johor royal household in the early 90s — at a time when exposing such matters was still taboo.

Anyone familiar with the politics of Malaysia would know the NST story on Johor’s royals wouldn’t have cleared without a nod from the country’s top leadership. But people who knew Danapal would also agree the paper couldn’t have put a better man on the job. One of those people would be Joe D’ Silva, an advertising legend at The Star who witnessed for himself Danapal’s influence with Johor society when he was there between the late 70s and early 80s.

“My arrival to work at The Star JB office in 1978 was with first to mengadap the highly respected G Danapal,” D’Silva told me, using the Malay phrase for seeking an audience with a sultan, raja or king.

A funny man in his own right, D’Silva said the gesture was appropriate for Danapal, who was acknowledged by the who’s who of Johor — including the Menteri Besar, who was head of government; the state’s executive councilors; and prominent businessmen — despite being just a reporter.

“He was the doyen of Fleet Street, Johor Baru,” D’Silva said, referencing London’s hallowed street that was home to Britain’s early-day newspapers. “It is said that a press conference in JB would not start without Danapal asking the first question. Many young journalists from all media used to hang on to his coattails.”

Like Arasu, who headed The Star’s editorial unit in Johor Baru, D’ Silva, who was in charge of advertising, recalls ending work days  with Danapal at a restaurant around the NST block. He remembers Danapal being as “cool” as the beers he loved so much. “I don’t ever recall him losing his temper,” D’ Silva adds.

Danapal also displayed a maturity that endeared him to almost anyone, said Kalimullah Hassan, another veteran of the Malaysian news business who marked his early days with The Star in Johor before turning foreign correspondent and later businessman. “Danapal was kind in the sense that he shared his experiences with younger journalists and was more like an elder brother than a rival,” Kalimullah told me.

That resonates with what I heard from Arasu, who describes Danapal as someone “comfortable in his own skin”.

With National Press Club members before flagging them off on a “treasure hunt”. Circa 1990s.

Unpretentious, confident by nature, and rather likable, Danapal brought joy wherever he went, adds Arasu. He remembers a grueling hike up a hill organized by a local politician, which might have been more daunting if not for the humor provided by Danapal. “Through the exhaustion, it was a bonding experience that I will cherish in memory of Danapal — a journalist, competitor and great friend,” Arasu said in summation.

Retiring from the NST in 2001, Danapal barely had a year’s rest before the UNDP came calling. He joined as their Southeast Asian flak, spending the next four years shedding light on the underreported wildlife conservation in Burma and Cambodia, particularly the story of elephants.

In New Zealand

When that UN tour folded, the newsroom life returned. From 2009 to 2017, Danapal was sub editor at the NAM News Network, a regional initiative led by Malaysia’s national news service Benama. If those additional 17 years of journalism post-NST weren’t enough, he took another year out in Phnom Penh, as editor of the Khmer Times till 2019. 

At the Bir Billing in Himanlal Pradesh in northern India

When those reporting stints finally ended, he set up his own media consultancy. 

But COVID intervened, limiting what he could do. 

It dawned on him then that it may be time for his other great passion — gardening. 

Yet, Danapal being Danapal, couldn’t keep his green fingers to himself. He tended to not just the plants and vegetables he grew but also those on the yard of people dearest to him.

“I entrusted him to water the garden, feed the cat and fishes at home whenever I had to go outstation for work,” said Tan Giak Lan, a retired cinema executive and long-time Danapal friend. “And he was the one I would text to identify unknown plants; needless to say, he always has the answer for me. He was my encyclopedia. my jungle gardening mentor to be exact!”

In a tribute after his death, she wrote on Facebook that Danapal led her on a jaunt through the Endau Rompin rainforest in Malaysia’s eastern Pahang state, helping to confront her fear of leeches. At the same time, he did not tell her he had spotted a snake — another reptile she was terrified of — until they had gotten home.

On the Endau-Rompin trail

The chivalry in Danapal was something Rachel Arputharajoo could relate to. Another Johor NST stalwart between the late 80s and early 90s, she was introduced to Bacardi Coke by the older gentleman, who also showed her how to “drink safely in a pub full of drunk men”.

Aside from his gardening and cooking, Tan said the one thing she’d miss of Danapal would be his light-hearted mischief. But that trait seems to have passed on to his grandchildren, whose antics were reminiscent of Danapal’s, she noted amusedly.

Indeed, of Danapal’s favorite people, his grandkids topped the list. When his grandson broke his favorite stone pillow, he smiled, instead of frowning  — just as he did when his own son wrecked his model aircraft when he was a boy.

“I bought him a Lego airplane kit years after my mishandling of his favorite toy,” Navin, Danapal’s son, told me. “His response was ‘thank you, but you didn’t have to.’ He never took anything too seriously, not even the loss of a favorite possession like that.” 

That’s because people mattered more to his father than things, said Navin. Danapal got worked up by the wrongs in society, rather than the wrongs done to him.

His homepage on Facebook shows that.

“Save the refugees, kill the elephants,” he wrote on October 20, 2015 after a German hunter paid nearly $80,000 to shoot the biggest elephant in Africa in decades.

As a Saivite, or Shiva devotee, he understood that the laws of the universe govern us all. What he couldn’t understand was people’s use of convenient labels to explain away society’s ills — especially those who advocate for natural justice to take its course to set something right, when humanity could act instead.

“Karma is [a] figment of imagination, conceived by those who created hell, heaven and life hereafter,” he wrote in one post, rueing the excuses created for both our actions and inaction. In another muse, he wondered: “How do you go about discovering yourself, when you are trapped in beliefs?”

But most of the time, he kept the discussion to simpler things like food. He was particularly against processed food, arguing that “Pringles aren’t actually potato chips” but “dehydrated potato” laden with corn, rice and wheat. The famous chips brand had a “host of sketchy additives” mistaken as “flavor” — when they were actually triggers for the brain to “crave for more”, he vented.

He espoused instead the Indian ponnanganni (pronounced pon-naan-kaa-nee), which he said wasn’t only rich in iron, calcium, phosphorus, protein and the vitamins A, B and C but could be turned into an assortment of stir-fried, sauteed, gravied and soupy dishes, even juices. At the time of writing, he had bought a tie of this leafy vegetable for just one ringgit — slightly more than 20 US cents. “So cheap for a veggie with so many health and medicinal benefits [for] asthma, eyesight, weight loss, piles, skin care, blood [and] bone health,” he enthused.

With those he had known for decades, Danapal shared his deepest thoughts. 

When I turned 50, I found in my inbox a wish from him that was both celebratory and philosophical.

“Let’s be conscious that birthdays are a reminder of our mortality,” he began, and I knew right away that we were navigating one of his favorite subjects: The duality of life and death.

“Because we’re mortal, we need to celebrate and enjoy every moment of our life,” he said. “It’s extremely important that we make this into a joyful and fantastic process; there is no time for frustration, for depression, for anxiety or anger; there is no time for any unpleasantness in this life.” 

He signed off, saying: “So, my life-oriented birthday message to you is just this: You can truly enjoy your life, you can joyfully walk through this life only if you know you are mortal.”

I’ll never forget that. And neither will I you, Danapal.

Be blessed wherever you are, mate. 

  • Barani Krishan is founder and Americas Editor at justneverforget.com

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