Young ex­po­nent and vo­cal­ist, Delhi-based Dr Harpreet Kaur pays her per­sonal and warm trib­ute to em­i­nent Gur­bani mu­si­col­o­gist and singer Bhai Nir­mal Singh Khalsa, who re­cently passed away suc­cumb­ing to COVID-19 in­fec­tion. Bhai Nir­mal Singh was dec­o­rated by the Sikh com­mu­nity, the world of mu­sic and the In­dian gov­ern­ment with state ho­n­ours. 

BHAI NIR­MAL SINGH KHALSA WAS BORN WITH A DI­VINE FIRE of mu­sic within him.  Son of a hum­ble farmer with no mu­si­cal train­ing in the fam­ily, he reached the pin­na­cle of glory in the field of Gur­bani singing and Gur­bani mu­sic.

Ren­der­ing Gur­bani in the Hin­dus­tani mu­si­cal notes -Raags, as men­tioned by Gu­rus in Guru Granth Sahib, he was one of the few shin­ing stars in the galaxy of Gur­bani Sangeet. Loved and ad­mired across the world, every mo­ment of his life was a les­son for his fol­low­ers. True to his name, he was serene, clear, im­mac­u­late, pure.

Bhai Nir­mal Singh was a per­ma­nent fix­ture at the holi­est of holies Dar­bar Sahib Am­rit­sar for decades -com­mit­ted to his duty and de­vout to the core in his ren­di­tion and man­ner­ism.

It is lit­tle known that even af­ter his train­ing as a Raagi -a mu­si­cal ex­po­nent of the Word of Guru Granth Sahib, he be­came a stu­dent of the great mu­si­cian of West Pun­jab -Ghu­lam Ali. Spend­ing two years with him, he pol­ished his mu­si­cal skills.

Al­ways serene and hum­ble on the har­mo­nium, I liked his smile while ac­cept­ing the In­dian state ho­n­our of Padamshri at the hands of In­dian Pres­i­dent Prat­i­bha Patil in 2009.

His sud­den death shocked the Sikhs and the world of di­vine mu­sic. He joined the few other world class mu­si­cians and singers who have been de­voured by the Coro­n­avirus syn­drome since the last few weeks.

As a stu­dent of Gur­bani Mu­sic, when this writer was work­ing on her doc­toral re­search, I had the priv­i­lege of in­ter­view­ing him. Hav­ing lis­tened to him dur­ing many a con­gre­ga­tion, I was ex­cited and hum­bled to meet him at his hum­ble abode in Am­rit­sar in No­vem­ber 2009      

Com­ing from small-town Al­war in Ra­jasthan, I was ner­vous to meet this mu­si­cal stal­wart in his liv­ing room dec­o­rated by a plethora of medals, tro­phies, ho­n­our and ap­pre­ci­a­tion cer­tifi­cates.

En­ter­ing the room, Nir­mal Singh humbly apol­o­gised that he did not make me wait for long. Very po­litely he asked me for a sim­ple in­tro­duc­tion. His hu­mil­ity, sim­plic­ity and down-to-earth per­son­al­ity made him a gi­ant in his class.

He was very nat­ural, sim­ple, spon­ta­neous, di­rect and clear with his an­swers to the ques­tion­naire I had pre­pared. He was very help­ful and im­parted out-of-the-box knowl­edge with­out me ask­ing ques­tions.

I was amazed, happy and com­fort­able as my ner­vous­ness had van­ished with­out me re­al­is­ing it.

I will cher­ish those pre­cious mo­ments spent with this great per­sona of Gur­bani mu­sic for the rest of my life, which mo­ments not only en­abled me to fine­tune my re­search but also helped in learn­ing about life and what life has to of­fer.

Bhai Nir­mal Singh not only sang Gur­bani but lived up to the Word of the Gu­rus. He never stopped learn­ing. He told, “Learn­ing has no age. Do not stop learn­ing un­til you are alive.”

“Look, daugh­ter, every stu­dent must work hard in at­tain­ing life goals with­out both­er­ing about ob­sta­cles. My child­hood and stu­dent life were full of strug­gles. Stay fo­cused and you will achieve your des­tiny and do not hes­i­tate to make mis­takes, ac­knowl­edge them, rec­tify them and move for­ward.”

“Every stu­dent of Gur­bani Mu­sic must have knowl­edge of all 31 Raags -mu­si­cal notes, men­tioned in Guru Granth Sahib,” he told me. He added, “Kir­tan should be per­formed in Raags only.”

“Look, daugh­ter, every stu­dent must work hard in at­tain­ing life goals with­out both­er­ing about ob­sta­cles. My child­hood and stu­dent life were full of strug­gles. Stay fo­cused and you will achieve your des­tiny and do not hes­i­tate to make mis­takes, ac­knowl­edge them, rec­tify them and move for­ward.”

Let us all in the world of Gur­bani mu­sic -as singers, mu­si­cians, San­gat and Gur­d­wara ad­min­is­tra­tors make en­deav­ours to en­sure the flow of Gur­bani in Raags de­fined by our Gu­rus. This will be the best trib­ute to Bhai Nir­mal Singh Khalsa.

Dr Harpreet Kaur is a scholar of Gur­bani Mu­sic.  She re­ceived her doc­toral de­gree from Ba­nasthali Vidyapeeth, Jaipur at the hands of the then Pres­i­dent of In­dia,  Pranab Mukher­jee for her work “ Gur­bani Sangeet Mein Prayukt Vividh Gayan Shailiyon Ka Vish­lesh­nat­mak Ad­hayan” – An­a­lyt­i­cal study of dif­fer­ent singing styles in Gur­bani Mu­sic. She lives in Delhi teach­ing mu­sic to chil­dren and young­sters.