Krishen Jit..

The demise of a great man, Krishen Jit, a great son of Malaysia...A truly personal friend that I shall miss...I first came to know this man when I was appointed as the Director of Development & Promotion of Culture, in the Ministry of Culture, Youth and Sports in the early eighties..During that period I work closely with this man, who is a genius in the performance art.I always find this man a great lover of the theater, He was then a lecturer at the University of Malaya and yet he spend all his free time in this field...Running around and organizing things that are related to theater...In a major project that we organized...The Mustika Malaysia sponsored by the Genting group he works tiredly to organized the Asean theater aspect of the festival that was held in Genting Highland. And in this particular time that I have had to work days and nights and sometime travel together to Asean capital to invited personally the theater group to participate...We had to go ourselves to meet theater figures for this festival because doing the normal way would not achieve the desired result we wanted...So off we went to Bangkok, Jakarta, Singapore and Manila... Talking with him has always being an inspiring things, I sometime wonder with the wealth of knowledge that this man have had on theater, why is that no national institution, like the university made this man the head of their theater faculty...It would have been great if He had been leading such an institution for the training of our local lovers of the arts....Till now I am still wondering...Well like all good man whose passion for works for the things he loves over took everything else in life, status does not matter to him at all...He just love his works in theater...That I belief have being his life long works, giving the country his wealth of knowledge of theater that no one else could...And I believe He did and its shows in the outcomes of the numbers of great actors and actress in various field that are in the theatrical scene in this country now...He was one of the early writer on theater in the Local newspaper, His column 'Utih' is the NST [New Straits Time] is one of the best that I had every read and I believe there are no replacement after he stop writing that column, after doing so for more the twenty years...He just write wherever he could, in a number of instance,He would just borrow a typewriter in my office and do the writing just there..He must has thoughts of all the idea and store it in his head all the time and when he is with the typewriter in my office, he would rattled it all in just a few minutes and then off it goes to the NST office for submission for this column, and sure enough it would be printed all in the next 'Utih' column...Another aspect of his life that not many took notice or know, is that the Man never drive a car but yet he could get anywhere with ease by making the public transport system especially the taxi an extension of himself...So getting to anywhere to him is simple. A transport especially a taxi would transported him from A to B or anywhere else with ease..Till this days I still do not know why he never drive a car...But it does not matter... Well that is his life and he did it his way...Like he always did... An inspiring man indeed...When I first notice the news on AP on the internet, I sank and felt his missing and then call a friend to just talk, I really miss this Man of theater...He is one of a kind not easy to replace... He is a giant in his own right...To me He is truly a great friend, who in a way effect my life and like all his friend we all miss him dearly...Goodbye my friend. May you find a place in heaven...Amen..