It was raining since morning. I had walked home from school drenched and, having eaten my lunch, was lying on the charpoy under the thatched roof of our railway quarter in Tiger Pass, Chittagong. I loved the rain. The man at the small tea house in Deevan Haat across the railway tracks put the record on his gramophone and K.L. Saigol’s voice drifted in with the rain -
“Aye katib-e-taqdir mujhe itna bata de, keon mujh se khafa hai tu, kya maene kia hai.” A strange sensation - was it eleation, or sadness - came over me. In the three minutes the song was over. I felt lost and overwhelmed and was not interested in the next song. So I went out and walked in the rain.

Incidentally, the two contemporaries – Khursheed Anwar and Sajjad Hussain – were not only appreciative of each other’s work but had many similar traits as well. Both were highly temperamental, believed in purity of the indigenous music, could not tolerate any interference in their work and had generally a ‘who cares’ kind of attitude towards their career. As a result, both ended up doing much fewer films than the offers they actually received.