When Kumar Saurabh heard Arif Lohar sing ‘Jugni’ on Coke Studio Pakistan, mixing the popular Punjabi folk song with poetry from Sufi saint Hazrat Sultan Bahu, he realised that the border of Punjab that separated ‘us’ from ‘them’ was artificial. He felt that way when he heard Pakistani singer Qurat-ul-Ain Balouch recite the poetry of Punjabi Sufi saint Shah Hussain in ‘Maye Ni Main Kinu Akhan’ and Pakistani Sufi musician Saeen Zahoor sing Bulleh Shah in ‘Aik Alif’. “I realised this poetry is our Punjab treasure too,” says Saurabh who grew up on a healthy diet of these bards despite the omnipotent influence of pop on Indian Punjabi music.
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Jeevay Punjab, the folk music venture Saurabh founded and that will celebrate its fifth anniversary this month with a concert, born from the dream of bringing together the two Punjabs, is even more relevant today in a time when the narrative about the region centres around the formation of a separate sovereign state. In our divided times, a concert featuring Indian and Pakistani Punjabi singers is unlikely to be realised here, but Saurabh’s dream to host such an event in a third country persists.
Love, ishq, pyaar
The idea for Jeevay Punjab was born in Ludhiana’s Bistro 226; the name came from popular Punjabi poet Surjit Patar who blessed the venture’s first live concert. It was an audience cry Patar had heard from the other side of the Wagah border, which divides Amritsar and Lahore. “Our ultimate vision is love, ishq, pyaar,” Saurabh says.
Jeevay Punjab’s most popular video to date, one with a million-plus views on YouTube, is of Arpan Sandhu singing melancholic folk song ‘Mitti Da Bawa’, about a woman who yearns for a child and makes a clay doll to whom she sings a lullaby. In addition to their regular singers, the platform has featured the songs of bigger names such as Rabbi, Bir Singh and Noor Chahal.
Saurabh, 29, was introduced to the poets of undivided Punjab early in life. His parents were both musicians: his father played the harmonium and anchored live shows, his mother sang, and the two of them worked with renowned singers such as Amar Singh Chamkila (the subject of Imtiaz Ali’s next film), Kuldeep Manak and Surinder Shinda (whom The New York Times called the “grandfathers of modern Punjabi music”). His parents travelled so frequently that they eventually left their youngest son with his sister Monika in Devi Nagar near Patiala. She was 16 years older than him and nurtured him like a mother. Saurabh likens his relationship with his sister to the one Guru Nanak, the first guru of Sikhism, shared with his elder sister Nanaki.
Saurabh got the full Punjabi village growing-up experience complete with shloks and gurbanis; after he finished his homework, his sister would read to him the histories of Sikh gurus such as Arjan Dev and Ram Das. She also introduced him to Bulleh Shah and his mentor Shah Inayat.
Men who can cry
It was inevitable that the power of poetry would linger, its wisdom staying with him and dramatically changing his life. He tried to go down the conventional path. He graduated as a mechanical engineer and even joined an automobile company for a few months. “I worked as a forging head but often I would take my tiffin and head into the jungle 10 km from my home in Ludhiana and listen to Waris Shah and Abida Parveen with a friend instead of going to work,” Saurabh tells me over the phone as he drives from Rishikesh to meet his wife Harleen in Dehradun. She’s an English literature teacher at Welham Boys’ School and his favourite crying companion at the movies. “Men who can cry are fortunate,” he says. “I thank god for making me sensitive.”
Abida Parveen | Photo Credit: Special Arrangement
His conversation is liberally sprinkled with Punjabi poetic references and themes from the past. “Rivers have their own stories,” he says. “All love stories are by the river Chenab, tales of Bhakti originate around the Beas, and the Sutlej is associated with blood and death.” After they were hanged, freedom fighters Bhagat Singh, Sukhdev and Rajguru were hurriedly cremated late in the night on the banks of the 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 their “words still swim in the winds” and that if he wanted to tap into their “frequency” you only needed lots of “silence, love and humility”. Saurabh believes he is only following in the footsteps of the elders. “All those roads that unite us are right, the ones that divide us are wrong. This is what my Punjab represents.”
Priya Ramani is a Bengaluru-based journalist and the co-founder of India Love Project on Instagram.
