In the Ice Candy Man, written in the backdrop of 1947’s Partition, Bapsi Sidhwa wrote: “And the gramophones and speakers mounted on tongas and lorries scratchily, endlessly pouring out the melody of Noor Jehan’s popular film song that is now so strangely apt,” Mere bachpan ke sathi mujhe bhool na jana, dekho, dekho hanse na zamana, hanse na zamana. When director Deepa Mehta made the novel into the movie Earth, she chose the same voice from the same 1946 hit Anmol ghari, but a different song: Jawan hai mohabbat, haseen …

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, …

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.
Khursheed Anwar was born in Mianwali. He belonged to a very respectable and enlightened family. Like other boys …