Curtains set to fall on Anad Foundation

Deepkamal Kaur

Tribune News Service

Jalandhar, September 18

More than a year since the Sultanpur Lodhi police forcibly evicted Anad Foundation, a free music academy being run by eminent vocalist Bhai Baldeep Singh, from the historical Qila Sarai, it is now winding up its operation from Punjab.

The academy had hired renowned musicians and had been training youths in traditional music instruments, including pakhawaj, rabab, saranda, kamachya etc, giving them free boarding facility too. But ever since the eviction incident in August last year, Bhai Baldeep Singh, who had also unsuccessfully contested the parliamentary polls in 2012 on the AAP ticket and had later been suspended too, had to shift the academy to a rented accommodation in the town.

“I had begun the academy after sending across a proposal to the state government in May 2009. Now since the civil administration has gone against us and is not ready to change its mind, I want it to close it down myself. No one, including the community, SGPC or the Akali Dal, has shown any regard to the music conservatory. I am myself shooting my own child before vultures come to kill it. That is what the dignity demands,” he said.

The exponent of Gurbani kirtan from the 13th generation of masters in the tradition expressed his grouse, “I am 48 now. I did a lot of running around in my 20s to carry out research on the old music instrument makers. I reached out to the last designer Giani Bhajan Singh in 1988 and learnt from him the finest nuances of the making of string instruments. He taught me cutting most accurate curves and I did my best to bring alive the traditional instruments. But police officials have in the past one year not returned the sarandas and other instruments designed by Giani Bhajan Singh. They broke our locks and instead put up their own locks and have refused to budge despite issuing RTI replies in our favour. But I cannot now just go on. Let the curtains fall now.”

Said a distraught Bhai Baldeep Singh, “It’s my wife who is running our house and paying fee of my two children too. If the government and the community cannot support me even a bit and cannot differentiate between diamond and glass, I cannot carry on the show further. I started on with the project with such an excitement. I spent tens of lakhs on renovating the rooms and boarding facilities for the trainees inside the Qila Sarai. I hired Ashutosh Upadhaya, a music award winner and son of Pannalal Upadhaya from Patna, Varinder Kumar for sitar tutoring and so on. I have not just been paying rent, salaries of trainers but also bearing the expenses of 25 to 30 students training with us at Sultanpur Lodhi. I cannot charge these trainees anything for what I am imparting is gift of God.”