Patiala, December 11
Athletes, officials and dignitaries from the two Punjabs congregated at the floodlit YPS stadium today to say goodbye to the city which hosted the inaugural edition of the Indo-Pak Punjab Games.
Like the opening ceremony, the concluding ceremony, too, turned out to be imaginatively crafted to suit the occasion. If the former said “welcome to the participants”, today’s ceremony said “goodbye” to the guests after a wonderful interaction of people from the two countries.
The North Zone Cultural Centre (NZCC), which charted the course of the ceremony by beautifully synchronising technology with human effort, managed to weave a rich texture to project Punjab, Punjabi and Punjabiat, all in equal measure.
The protocol part of the ceremony commenced when the chief guest, Gen SF Rodrigues, Punjab Governor, was driven in the stadium in an open jeep at 5.30 pm where he was received by Chief Minister Amarinder Singh and his Cabinet colleagues.
The National Anthem that followed the Governor’s entry left everybody flummoxed as the band played out a truncated version. Spectators standing were bemused and confused when the band refused to go beyond the first stanza of the anthem.
This was followed by the customary march past with five Indian Punjab athletes leading the way carrying five flags — the flags of both India and Pakistan, the Olympic flag and the flags of the Olympic Associations of the two Punjabs.
The chief guest released the souvenirs of the games which were later handed over to the Chief Minister and the IOC member from Pakistan, Syed Shahid Ali.
In the absence of POA President S.S. Dhindsa, the Secretary-General of the POA Raja K.S. Sidhu had to outline the concept of the first edition of the games and their birth during a meeting held at Lahore in January this year.
In the backdrop of the speeches, the flame was extinguished and the games flag lowered, which was later handed over to the Mayor of Lahore, Amir Nazim.
The cultural ceremony went off without a hitch. Two ‘marasi bhands’, Mukhtiar Singh and Sukhdass Singh, had the audience in splits with their witty anecdotes. This was followed by a performance by Dolly Gulleria, daughter of Surinder Kaur, welcoming everybody with “Chan ve ke shaunkan mele dee”. This song was first sung by her mother during the prime of her life.This was followed by Punjab folk singer Pammi Bai singing a popular folk song.
The piece de resistance of the 70-minute programme, conceived by IPS officer Hardip Dhillon and executed by NZCC Programme Officer Ravinder Sharma and National School of Drama (NSD) veteran Prof Bansi Kaul, came when Sufi singer Hans Raj Hans recited “Sanu khamb vekendre laija, jan reh ja sade kol, ve pardesia” which surely made many an eye moist.
Another item which touched an emotional chord and which aptly came towards the end was Surjit Pattar’s presentation of his poetry through which he tried to depict that Punjab may be the land of five rivers but only two flow on either side of the border. He urges the Ravi, the only river flowing through both Punjabs, to take the messages of welcome from Sutlej and Beas from Indian Punjab to Chenab and Jhelum on the other side of the border and bring back the message of love from there.
The inevitable end came when renowned Punjab singer Sukhnain Singh recited an old Kishore Kumar song “Chalte Chalte, mere ye geet yaad rakhna, kabhi alvida na kehna, kabhi alveeda na kehna.”
Prominent among those present on the occasion were AICC General Secretary Ambika Soni, Deputy Chief Minister Rajinder Kaur Bhattal, Patiala MP Preneet Kaur, PPCC chief HS Hanspal, IOA Secretary-General Randhir Singh and a host of Cabinet ministers and Parliamentary Secretaries.
