A transcript of the eulogy read by Angela Stevenson at Samir's funeral
Our dear friend Samir,
I have known Samir for about 20 years and although I did not have the privilege to meet Dipika, I feel that Dipika and Samirs marriage, their life together and the almost joint end to their earthly bindings allows their souls to move forward together. This must be fairly unique and I wonder if this suggests this journey will be to the total liberation of their souls.
It is a comfort to think that Samir and Dipika will be sitting with Swami Nityananda who founded The RamaKrishna Vivekananda Mission in West Bengal.
The central work of The Ramakrishna Vivekananda Mission is to take in poor often discarded children, to give them food, shelter, an education and at the end of that to go on to further education, or learn a profession or a trade. Samir was a personal friend and disciple of Swami Nityananda and as such dedicated much of his life to raising funds to do all that he could to ensure this work although many thousands of miles away from the UK became known about here and to find sponsors to fund 100s of places in The Mission since 1993.
I was introduced to Samir by my sister-in-law, as my role at that time was in developing community projects and it was thought that through this work we could help The Mission. As it was the project could not give direct help. However, in sitting with and listening to Samirs sincerity and desire to save as many children from hunger as possible I realised I could help him as a friend to cement his work by creating a formal charity ... also to earn gift aid thus further helping support The Mission. Hence together with friends of Samir including Cheryl Williams, Gill Robinson, Magda Gupta, David Green, David Haywood and Joahanna Wild we created Friends of Ramakrishna Vivekananda Mission .... we soon changed that name to the easier to pronounce FORVM. Samir had already collected many sponsors and by the time we set up the formal charity there were approximately 86 sponsors supporting 92 children.
The number of sponsors and supported children grew. The number of sponsors inevitably fell during and since covid nevertheless there was sufficient money ring-fenced to continue supporting all of the children who had been sponsored.
Samir's wife Dipika was from an area in West Bengal known as Purulia. There is an acute water shortage there, especially during the searingly hot summers. To help alleviate this we applied for support from the Broughton Catholic Charitable Society, through my husband John Charnock, a past president. This society works for the relief of poverty wherever it is found, and on hearing the conditions for many in Purulia they did not hesitate to fund a deep tube well.
There is also a sizeable Leprosy colony in Purulia. The conditions for those inhabitants could not have been much worse. The desire to help was extreme and the answer came in the auspices of sponsors David Haywood and David Green who Samir recruited as Trustees. These good gentle men belonged to The Military and Hospitaller Order of Saint Lazarus of Jerusalem (Lancs) whose aim is to alleviate the suffering of those with leprosy. In 2010 through our FORVM Samir was able to coordinate the installation of a deep tube well funded entirely the Order of Saint Lazarus. This is a lasting tribute to The Order and to Samir. In addition, the Order of Saint Lazarus funded regular welfare visits from The Mission in Purulia to the leprosy colony AND The Order sponsored 10 children.
The desire to provide clean water at centres led to FORVM funding and installing a number of tube wells and some 15 water purification units.
If that was not enough there was the building of a primary school and stocking of a library in Purulia. Also stocking libraries in Mondarmoni and Pathamura. In addittion there was also the provision of a number of bicycles to encourage poor families to let children have lessons at the schools. The provision of IT equipment in Jayrambati, raising fund for relief following the Tsunami in 2005 and much more including funding the provision of sewing machines to enable distressed women to earn some money working from home.
It is fair to say that through Samir the work of the Trustees at FORVM hundreds of poor children have received an education. Some of those who might have otherwise starved have gone on to become doctors, nurses, engineers, shoe makers, tailors and more.
I resigned my role as a Trustee some years ago in order to support my daughter Caroline’s endeavour called Foodinate which she developed to support the UK homeless. But by then Samir and I had, as Caroline observed, a healthy brother sister relationship - by that she meant we would argue fiercely with neither backing down but days later behave like it never happened. A few months ago Samirs health really started to fail, he asked me and my husband John Charnock to rejoin as Trustees to ensure the work of FORVM and the care for the sponsors of the children be passed into the safe hands of Ramakrishna Vivekananda Mission Bolton. Of course we accepted and due to the circumstances which brings us here today we are just at the beginning of that task. We and our fellow Trustees past and present including John Birket see this as a tribute and a duty to Samir and thus are most keen to bring this to a swift conclusion with the help of Samirs daughter Shamistha and her husband Andy.
It is our hope Samir and Dipika’s souls be forever entwined in liberation.
