Kumar Saurabh | Photo Credit: Special Arrangement
When Kumar Saurabh heard Arif Lohar singing ‘Jugni’ mixing the popular Punjabi folk song with the poetry of Sufi saint Hazrat Sultan Bahu on Coke Studio Pakistan, he realized that the border of Punjab that separates ‘us’ from ‘them’ separates from, was artificial. He felt this when he heard Pakistani singer Qurat-ul-Ain Baloch reciting the poetry of Punjabi Sufi saint Shah Hussain in ‘Maye Ni Main Kinu Akhan’ and Pakistani Sufi musician Sayan Zahoor singing Bulleh Shah in ‘Aik Alif’. “I realized this poem is also a treasure of our Punjab,” says Saurabh, who grew up on a healthy diet of these charans despite pop’s ubiquitous influence on Indian Punjabi music.
Jeevan Punjab, the folk music venture founded by Saurabh and which will celebrate its fifth anniversary this month with a music festival, which was born out of a dream to bring the two Punjabs together, is even more relevant today when the region The narrative is centered around the formation of a separate sovereign state. In our divided times, a concert with Indian and Pakistani Punjabi singers is unlikely to materialize here, but Saurabh’s dream is to host such an event in a third country.
love, ishq, pyar
The idea of Jeevan Punjab was born at Bistro 226 in Ludhiana; The name came from popular Punjabi poet Surjit Patar, who blessed the venture’s first live concert. It was the cry of an audience heard by Pater from the other side of the Wagah border, which divides Amritsar and Lahore. “Our last sight is love, Ishq, loveSaurabh says.
Jeeves Punjab’s most popular video of all time, which has crossed millions of views on YouTube, is Arpan Sandhu singing the sad folk song ‘Mitti Da Bawa’, about a woman longing for a child and a soil Ki makes a doll for which she sings a song called Lullaby. Apart from its regular singers, the stage has also featured songs by big names like Rabbi, Bir Singh and Noor Chahal.
Saurabh, 29, was introduced to the poets of undivided Punjab in his childhood. Both his parents were musicians: his father played the harmonium and anchored live shows, his mother sang, and they both worked with renowned musicians such as Amar Singh Chamkila (the subject of Imtiaz Ali’s next film), Kuldeep Manak and Surinder Shinda. Worked with singers. Whom the new York Times Called “The Grandfather of Modern Punjabi Music”). His parents traveled so often that they eventually left their youngest son with his sister Monica in Devi Nagar near Patiala. She was 16 years older than him and raised him like a mother. Saurabh compares his relationship with his sister to that shared by Sikhism’s first guru, Guru Nanak, with his elder sister Nanaki.
Saurabh got the full experience of growing up in a Punjabi village stanza And gurbanis, After completing his homework, his sister would read him the history of Sikh gurus like Arjan Dev and Ram Das. He also introduced him to Bulleh Shah and his guru Shah Inayat.
men who can cry
It was inevitable that the power of the poem would live on, that its wisdom would stay with him and dramatically change his life. He tried to follow the traditional path. He graduated as a mechanical engineer and also joined an automobile company for a few months. Saurabh told me over the phone, “I worked as a foraging head, but often I would take my tiffin and go to the forest 10 km from my home in Ludhiana and meet Waris Shah and Abida with a friend instead of going to work.” Used to listen to Parveen. When he drives from Rishikesh to meet his wife Harleen in Dehradun. She is an English literature teacher at Welham Boys’ School and his favorite crying partner in movies. “Men who can cry are lucky,” he says. “I thank God for making me sensitive.”
Abida Parveen | Photo Credit: Special Arrangement
Their conversation is sprinkled liberally with Punjabi poetic references and themes from the past. “Rivers have their own stories,” he says. “All love stories originate on the banks of the Chenab River, devotional stories originate around the Beas, and the Sutlej is associated with blood and death.” After they were hanged, late night freedom fighters Bhagat Singh, Sukhdev and Rajguru were cremated in a hurry on the banks of Sutlej.
“Punjab is the same land where Guru Nanak and Baba Bulleh Shah and Baba Farid walked,” he says, adding that a professor once told him that his “words still float in the wind” and that if he could tap into their “frequency” You only needed a lot of “silence, love and humility”. Saurabh believes that he is just following in the footsteps of the elders. “All the roads that connect us are right, those that divide us are wrong. This is what my Punjab represents.”
Priya Ramani is a Bengaluru-based journalist and co-founder of India Love Project on Instagram.