sikhpride

Amardeep Singh figured into news, when his book on Sikh heritage was released at a number of places in India and foreign countries after small intervals of time. He was born in India in 1966, but his parents had migrated to India after partition of country in 1947. He was told as a child that some members of his extended family were killed in the ensuing massacres at that time. After he studies, he worked with American Express. During this period, he honed his writing and photographic skills. His jobs took him from India to Hong Kong and finally, to Singapore in 2001, when he was 35. However, as an Indian citizen – which he was until 2005 – he was unable to secure a tourist visa to visit Pakistan due to the strained ties between both countries. In 2013, he quit his job here as the company’s Asia Pacific head for revenue management “to do something different” and plunged into full-time history research. A year later, he was in Pakistan. He toured the various areas of that country and visited a large number of heritage places which included temples, mentions and forts, and also the places associated with Sikh Gurus. He was pained to see that many of the heritage buildings were the verge of extinction these abandoned buildings were just crumbling. He took photographs of each and every building. The deep interest taken by him is evidenced by the fact that he took picture even of those buildings about whom nobody knew. For example a former Sikh temple in the Manshera region, a library is also among those pictures. When he returned to Singapore, he decided to write about his journey and extensive touring in Pakistan in the form of a book so that the people may know about such heritage buildings which may not exist some years after. Thus, this wond book named as ‘Lost Heritage’ came into being. It’s really a wonderful book as it takes the readers back to the olden time and gives a glance of abandoned, occupied and functional Gurdwaras, interfaith aspects, forts, battlegrounds, havelis, art, architecture, spiritual remnants, educational institutions, residential and commercial establishment. The learned author still want to continue his research about our heritage across Pakistan in frontier Baluchistan and Sindh areas. He is indeed a role model in this regard.