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IDOL TURNED IDEAL
TURNED ICON ISHMEET SINGH IS NO MORE
VOICE OF INDIA
BELOVED ICON OF SIKH YOUTH
ISHMEET SINGH
IS NO MORE
A
HOMAGE BY THE WORLD SIKH NEWS
When he would sing
a lilting lyric, he made many cry; next he would hit a happy note
with a chirpy song and the audience would dance in a frenzy. Hope
and icon of the Sikh youth, Ishmeet Singh, voice of all of us, is no
more.
Ishmeet Singh (20)
drowned in a swimming pool at a resort in Maldives at around 2000
hours Indian time. He had gone to
Maldives
to take part in a concert. Gurprinder Singh Sodhi, father of Ishmeet,
who shot to fame by winning the Star India TV Voice of India contest
in November last year, said at their home in Ludhiana that the event
management company, which took his son to the Maldives, informed him
at around 8 pm that the singer died due to drowning in the swimming
pool of the hotel where he was staying.
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An honour, and the queer feeling!
Only months
ago, Ishmeet Singh was honoured by ghazal samrat Jagjeet Singh
and his wife Chitra with an award in memory of their deceased
son who had passed away in an accident. It was difficult not to
cry. And just months later, Ishmeet has also left us all. It is
heartless to tell someone not to cry.
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Mystery surrounded
Ishmeet Singh's death immediately as his paternal uncle Charan Kamal
Singh said in
Lucknow
that the singer knew how to swim. "There were so many people around
him all the time and there was the hotel staff. How could he drown
just like that?"
Ishmeet was a
student of B.Com second year at the MNC college in Mumbai. His
father said Ishmeet had left
Ludhiana
on Monday for Chandigarh from where he went to Mumbai on way to the
Maldives.
A life size cut out of Ishmeet in a corner at the Sodhi family's
Ludhiana house in Shastri Nagar underlined the cruel hand of
tragedy.
Maldives
police has started an inquiry. In Maldives capital Male, police's
media coordinator in Maldives Sgt Ahmed Shiam said in all there were
seven people around when Ishmeet went towards the pool.
 Police were
questioning two prime witnesses - a 25 year old woman and a 14 year
old boy, both from
India,
who were at the pool at the time when the tragedy occurred. Police
has pinned the time at around 4 pm local time when Ishmeet died at
the Chaaya Island Resorts, also known as Chaaya Dhonewali Surfing.
The news of Ishmeet
Singh's death left the world, his millions of fans, South Asia's TV
audience and the diaspora which followed his progress song after
song, week after week, shell shocked.
The Sikh community
had celebrated worldwide his achievement at becoming VOICE OF INDIA
through a popular TV contest where millions kept faith him, his
voice and his loving and polite personality, voting for him all the
way right to the top last year.
None other than the
planet's goddess of singing, Lata Mangeshkar, had blessed Ishmeet
Singh. Since then, Ishmeet Singh had been in demand and even months
after the show ended, TV channels would keep pulling him in one or
the other program to boost their audience figures.
Forever shall
Ishmeet Singh be known as the man who made being a turbaned Sikh the
trendiest hairstyle statement, inspiring many Sikh young men and
women to follow the ways of the Guru and keep unshorn hair. Being
turbaned became synonymous with being beautiful and smart.
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The World in
shock
Lata Mangeshkar: "I feel very sad. He'd come to meet me,
sang for me, and I had nudged him to pay a little more attention
to classical training. He'd told me, 'Mein ek din aapko bahot
bada ban ke dikhaoonga' (one day I'll make a big name for
myself)."
Farah Khan: "He was a gentleman, never saying anything
bad about any contestant. Once I was having a late dinner in the
studio and he sat beside me, sharing my food. He told me, 'You
have so many fans. I'd never thought I would one day eat sitting
side by side with you.' I still can't believe he's dead."
Playback singer Alka Yagnik: "It's shocking. It's a cruel
thing that has happened to him. I still can't believe it."
Harshit Saxena, who was a runner up when Ishmeet won: "He
was like a brother to me. I cannot even comment on what has
happened. I cannot believe that he is no longer with us."
All Sikh bodies-run schools in Delhi would remain closed on
Wednesday, July 30, 2008 in memory of Ishmeet Singh.
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Perhaps Ishmeet
Singh was always closer to God. The day he won the biggest contest
on Indian TV in Novemebr 2007 was also the day of the Guru. It was
Guru Nanak Dev Ji's gurpurab.
Ludhiana,
from whose noisy and industrial lanes Ishmeet Singh had risen to
become the brightest of the stars on Indian glamour horizon went
into a total shock.
Sikhs who had
celebrated the event from California to Calgary to Christchurch to
Chandigarh were frantically calling to confirm whether the sad news
was indeed true.
Ishmeet Singh was
honoured by Sikhs worldwide, by even the highest of the high Sri
Akal Takht.
Forever shall the
Sikh community remain indebted to this young man who made us all
feel proud of our identity.
At the World Sikh
News, we pay homage to Sardar Ishmeet Singh, and pray to Akal Purakh
in this hour of grief to give his family and friends and fans the
strength to cope with the immense loss.
29 July, 2008
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