Ambassador Bal Anand – a man of sterling worth

 

Ambassador Bal Anand – a man of sterling worth

Ambassador Bal Anand (1943-2022), my friend, guide and philosopher, passed away on July 29, 2022 after a brief hospitalization for some health complications pertaining to heart. I was stunned to hear this bad news from one of our mutual friends, Rajinder Kashyap, on telephone from Delhi. It was an unexpected call for me.  Bal Anand Sahib himself told us in an e-mail message to his close friends almost a month ago that he would be off from the

Ambassador Bal Anand

social media for a short period because of some medical concerns. Nevertheless, we, some of us in his friend’s circle, like Ambassador V.B. Soni, Ambassador Zile Singh, and Principal Jagdish Chandra Joshi spoke to each other to check and know about Bal Anand Sahib. No one of us expected this sudden and untimely blow in the demise of Ambassador Bal Anand, a through gentleman and an excellent human being, apart from his professional prowess as one of the finest career diplomats of India.

Though I had heard of Bal Anand Sahib, IFS of 1971 batch, as a junior functionary in the Ministry of External Affairs yet I did not have an opportunity to meet him personally till we both went up in the ladder in 1999-2000, me as Director of Central Asia Division in the MEA and he as Ambassador-designate to Armenia. He came to meet my boss, Joint Secretary Aloke Sen, for a briefing on the issue of Nagorano-Karabakh – a disputed territory between Armenia and Azerbaijan. I was also present in the meeting.  I met Ambassador Bal Anand for the first time. I was impressed by his simplicity, easy demeanor, soft tone and a keen sense of discussing and analyzing the issue as a student.  Coming to know that I belonged to Jalandhar, he told me that he would come and sit with me one day to talk about his cherished memories of Jalandhar and his Alma mater, DAV College. He did so and we became friends. He repeated his short visits to my small office room in South Block quite often before departing for Yerevan (Armenia). We both moved on in pursuit of our diplomatic career and exchanged greetings occasionally with an urge to keep in touch.

Our meaningful interaction culminated into friendship only after my retirement in December, 2010, some 7 years after that of Ambassador Bal Anand’s. We both subscribed to ‘Punjabiat’ as sons of the soil with ordinary social background. Incidentally, we both are members at the IFS Villas in Greater Noida and our villas are located close by in the same lane. For redoing and renovating his villa, he contacted me to have some clues and tips to get a civil contractor for the job as I had done so earlier. We also remained in touch with each other with regard to other matters of interest and concern through e-mail and my blogs. I often shared my blogs with him and he was kind enough to go through and comment which encouraged me further. Bal Anand

With Pakistani intellectual poet Ahmed Faraz

Sahib was a man of letters with an appreciable literary acumen. Bal Anand Sahib, with Masters Degree in English, remained a Lecturer of English language, before joining the government service, and enjoyed a good command on Punjabi, Urdu and Hindi besides his compulsory language Persian as an IFS diplomat.   Sometime in the summer of 2014, Bal Anand Sahib along with his gracious wife planned to visit Jalandhar and informed me. Though the time schedule clashed with our sojourn to Sweden to be with our son yet I humbly offered them to come and stay in our small flat and my younger son Rupesh, who was staying in a separate flat in the same compound, would oversee their comfort. Accordingly, they stayed at our humble abode. On our return, I found a packet of books and a bottle of an exotic drink which our guests left for us, a thoughtful gesture, of course. One of the books – ‘Sukh Sunehe’ belonged to himself. I read with interest and wrote about it in my blog: https://diplomatictitbits.blogspot.com/2014/08/sukh-sunehe.html

 Later I wrote about yet another book of his – Nave Nimbandh: https://diplomatictitbits.blogspot.com/2015/02/nave-nibandh-collection-of-new-essays.html

Both the write ups were included and published in my book – The Bits and Pieces – Reminiscences and Reflections of a Novice which was released in June, 2019. I am happy to add that Ambassador Bal Anand not only went through the draft/manuscript of the book and gave valuable suggestions with his experience but also kindly agreed to write the Foreword of the book. Just to give the flavor of our

With Principal Jagdish Joshi at his residence 

friendly relationship, I quote from the opening paragraph of the Foreword, “Many of us luckier indeed to come across friends who are specially blessed persons and are intuitively gifted to ‘pen down’ their deeply felt perceptions, interesting experiences and the significant events they might have been a witness to or a part of, as they say, ‘luck by chance’. Shri Ramesh Chander, a very dear friend and formerly a kind colleague in the Ministry of External Affairs, known to me for decades, eminently qualify to be inducted in this privileged category.” I was much impressed by his depth of thought by reading his book ‘Expressions of Freedom’. I found Bal Anand Sahib a man with fond memory of his roots in the Malwa region of Punjab and his healthy and appreciable interest in Jalandhar, having been a student and teacher at DAV College, a premier educational institution of the Doaba region of which I also happen to be an alumnus. In the recent years, he came to Jalandhar twice for functions at his Alma Mater and we were privileged to host him at our humble home. I was rather surprised and further impressed that, in spite of the fact he remained away from Jalandhar for a long time in the diplomatic career, he had developed and nurtured friendship with many big names in the academic and
intellectual circles in and around Jalandhar to name a few; Principal Jagdish Chandra Joshi, Prof. K.K. Ghai, Principal K.C. Mohindru, Col. Tilak Raj, Prof. T.R. Shingari, Kundan Lal Badhan, Ajit Singh Langeri, Justice Sat Paul Bangarh, Principal Sanjiv Arora, Prof. Dinesh Arora among others. Bal Anand Sahib was a great help to me in maintaining and renting out of my villa in his neighborhood at IFS Villas. I stayed with them a couple of times and enjoyed their hospitality; particularly of the gracious lady, Madam Aradhna and Varoon, their well-groomed son. Bal Anand Sahib’s well stocked library of rare books and his collection of old letters, photos and mementos is impressive and is a loud commentary on his literary and academic tastes with a sense of history. Whenever we spoke on phone, he will often mention about my villa close by and speak high of Loveena and their two lovely daughters, residents there. Bal Anand Sahib was so considerate that at least two times during my short visits, he took me along to friendly lunches at  India International Centre and Central Government Officers Club at Chanakyapuri with some of the friends and senior colleagues from the IFS fraternity; Ambassadors – VB Soni, SK Mathur, RP Singh, Ajit Kumar, Ashok Amrohi, Azad Toor among others. I enjoyed their joint hospitality and cemented my bonds of friendship, courtesy Ambassador Bal Anand. His last project, in literary realm, was his autobiography in Punjabi – Meri Jiwan Yatra. He was so good and friendly to me that he shared and discussed the contents with me many a times before the book came out. I learnt a great deal in the process. We could succeed, in motivating and approaching the Punjabi media in Jalandhar and abroad, in getting good reviews of the book. Editor-in-Chief of the Desh Doaba and the Ambedkar Times, Prem Chumber, being published from California (USA), was particularly helpful in serializing some of important contents of the autobiography in the Desh Doaba (Punjabi) and carrying my blog which I humbly wrote to attempt a sort of review of the book:

Speaking at DAV College Jalandhar

https://diplomatictitbits.blogspot.com/2021/12/meri-jiwan-yatra-autobiography-of.html

Bal Anand Sahib was very keen to release ‘Meri Jiwan Yatra’ in Jalandhar and we discussed the matter accordingly to fix the time schedule and an appropriate venue in the coming months. But, alas, that was not to be. Ambassador Bal Anand, my friend, guide and philosopher, is no more, a great personal loss. I wanted to join and stand with Madam Aradhna Anand and their sons Varoon and Aditya and other members of the bereaved family but due to logistical and health reasons would not be able to do so in person. I join, in absentia, the family, relations and friends at the Antim Ardas of the departed soul of Bal Anand Sahib on August 3, 2022 with this blog as a humble tribute to ‘a man of sterling worth’, Bal Anand Sahib.

न हाथ थाम सके न पकड़ सके दामन,

बहुत करीब से उठकर चला गया कोई.