A man of Principles: Late Chandrakant Gokhale

A man of Principles: Late Chandrakant Gokhale

“A man of Principles”, this is how the closest friends of Chandrakant Gokhale remembered him while mourning over his sad demise on 20th June 2008. His son and renowned actor, Vikram Gokhale, called his father as an extreme follower of principles.
Chandrakant Gokhale has worked almost 75 years on Marathi stage. During the period of over 60 years, he acted in 68 Marathi movies, 16 Hindi films and a couple of Hindi/Marathi TV serials. Gokhale acted in 64 stage plays during his memorable career. He started working with likes of Bhalji Pendharkar and Baburao Pendharkar the ones who founded Marathi film industry and very recently he was working on a project of a young Marathi director. He has worked with at least three generations of artists and he was still working as if he always wanted to work till his last breath. We know him as a great artist.
However, he was also known as a man of principles, a very simple and polite man. He lived through very hard times as an artist in his younger days. Those were the days, when artist used to earn very small amount; often it was very difficult to run a family. He would feel accountable of not being able to provide his children adequately; however he was a proud father of very talented children. He would express to his children how much fortunate he was to have such talented and very good children.
His son and renowned artist Vikram Gokhale described his father as self-reliant man. He did not hesitate to say that his father refused his monetary support and wanted to stay self-reliant. Chandrakant Gokhale used to worship Vinayak Sawarkar, famously known as Swatantryaveer Sawarkar. Chandrakant Gokhale was a real patriotic person and was helping in his ways to disabled soldiers and war widows. With the accumulated interest on his fixed deposits in the bank, he used to donate one lakh rupees every year to the cause of soldiers who defend our boundaries. When he could not make it to one lakh rupees a year, due to reduced rate on interests; he used to take only a meal a day and to save money to add it to a lakh rupees every year. It was his principle decision, that to save and donate a lakh rupees every year at the cost of his own health. He was struggling with cancer but he was worried about how could he help the cause of soldiers. The world would remember him as a very good artist and as a very good human being.