When Kerala went under water, Shefeen Ahamed stood at the very front — not for the headlines, but because serving people was simply who he was. A tribute to my friend , the Odisha-cadre IPS officer and Kerala’s flood hero who died at 50, and the supercop behind the uniform.
By Binod Anand — Member(Non-official) , High Power Committee on MSP and Agri Reforms , Govt. of India ,Secretary General, Confederation of NGOs of Rural India (CNRI); Founder, World Cooperative Economic Forum (WCOOPEF)
7-8 Minute Read
Remembering my friend Shefeen
By Binod Anand
My soul looks back, and it does not go first to the records, or the ranks, or the postings a career leaves behind. It goes to a plate of idli and sambhar in Bhubaneswar, and to a friend laughing so hard he could not keep still.
That is where I find him now. Not in the last photograph, not in the news of his passing — but at a table, mid-sentence, mid-laugh, entirely alive.
The table in Bhubaneswar
We had meant to have a quiet meal. It became hours.
The idli came, and the sambhar, and somewhere between the first plate and the last we stopped noticing the food altogether, because one old memory had pulled up another, and that one a third, until we were both laughing in that helpless, breathless way — rolling from one corner of the room to the other like two young boys and not two grown men with grey coming into our hair.
And in between the laughter we did what friends always do. We made plans. We spoke of all the things we still meant to do, the work we would build, the causes we would take up, the years we assumed were still spread out ahead of us, patient and endless.
I did not know, sitting across that table, that it was the last time.
My soul looks back to it constantly now. If I had known, I would have stayed longer. I would have laughed a little more. I would have said the things we always tell ourselves there will be time to say.
There was one more thing at that table. When I was appointed to the Prime Minister’s High-Power Committee, Shefeen was among the first to celebrate — and he was happier than I was. He had known me long enough to understand exactly how my mind worked, the way I turned a problem over, what I could and could not do. He needed none of it explained. He simply grinned, as though he had been expecting the news all along, and told me it was about time the world caught up.
To be understood like that — completely, and without effort — is one of the rarest gifts a friendship can give. I did not know then how much I would miss it.
The man inside the uniform
Shefeen wore the uniform with pride, but he never let it stand between himself and the person in front of him.
He had rank and authority and responsibilities that would have made most men formidable, even distant. And yet he stayed, somehow, remarkably human. You could speak to him without feeling you were addressing an office. You could disagree with him and lose nothing of the friendship. You could talk about the gravest of matters one moment and, the next, be laughing together over something completely ordinary.
I have often wondered where that came from. At heart, Shefeen was a student of Sociology and Geography — subjects that teach you to see people not as cases to be managed but as communities to be understood, shaped by the land they live on and the lives they lead. It made him a different kind of officer. He policed with an understanding of people rather than of rules alone, and that is exactly why ordinary men and women trusted him even when he wore the uniform. They could feel the person inside it.
When the waters rose
And then Kerala went under.
Water climbed into homes and did not stop. Roads disappeared. Families were separated, villages cut off, people left standing on their rooftops waiting for a hand that might not come. Fear settled over everything.
But alongside the fear was that other, stubborn thing — the human spirit refusing to sit down. Fishermen became rescuers. Volunteers became lifelines. And at the very front of it was Shefeen.
He was not there for the headlines. When others saw a disaster, he saw people who needed help; when others saw chaos, he saw responsibility; and when everyone around him was spent, he found one more reason to keep going. In those days he worked wonders. For countless families in Kerala, that time will always quietly carry his name.
That, to me, is what government is at its best — not an office, but a promise that when you have nowhere else to turn, someone will stand with you. Shefeen was that promise, made flesh.
Two homes
There was a beautiful contradiction in his life. Kerala was his birthplace; Odisha was his cadre, his work, his second home built over decades of service.
Born of one soil, he served another with distinction — and when his own home state was drowning, he came back and stood with its people. A Malayali who gave his best years to Odisha. An Odisha-cadre officer who returned for Kerala. A man who, in the end, belonged to no boundary at all. His service belonged only to people.
The last battle
My soul looks back and still cannot quite believe this part.
Shefeen had spent his life facing down difficult situations. But his final adversary was of a different kind — cancer, against which no uniform could shield him and no rank could command anything away. And he didn’t share it with us until today when we heard – We lost him forever physically.
He must fought it with courage but not given us any information. When I spoke last he said ” we will hang out again ” .There is something especially hard to carry in the knowledge that a man who spent his life helping others had, at the last, to fight so hard for his own. Those of us who loved him could do little but pray.
At fifty, the battle ended. Far too soon. There should have been more years — more service, more friendship, more of that laughter, more life.
My soul looks back
When an officer dies, the files record his postings and the department remembers his work. But that was never the measure of him.
The measure is in the families who remember he came when they needed him. In the young officers who learned something from watching him. In the friends who still, out of pure habit, reach for the phone — before the world corrects itself and reminds us he will not answer. That is the cruelty of it: everything continues exactly as it did yesterday, and yet, for those who loved him, everything has changed.
So my soul looks back, because looking back is what is left to me.
It looks back to the table in Bhubaneswar. To the sociology student who became a people’s officer. To the man who stood at the front when the waters rose. To the friend who understood me without a word, and celebrated my news as though it were his own.
Shefeen, you were an IPS officer by profession, a servant of India by calling, and Kerala’s hero when it needed one. But to me you were something far more ordinary and far more precious. You were my friend.
You spent your life answering other people’s emergencies and standing between danger and the people who needed protecting. Now, at last, you may rest. We will carry the memories. Kerala will carry the story. Odisha will carry your service. Your family will carry your love. And your friends will carry you in our hearts.
Farewell, my friend.
My soul looks back — and it finds you laughing, across a table, with all the years we thought we still had spread out before us.
May you rest in peace.
