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 hai zamana.

The trend Javed Sheikh started in Yeh Dil Aap Ka Hua is followed by Rashid Khwaja in Salakhain, where Bollywood playback singers Sonu Nigam, Alka Yagnik and Kumar Sanu lend their voices (in their own names) to Lollywood actors. M. Arshad has composed the songs and with the help of lyricists Amjad Islam Amjad, Ayub Khawar, Riaz-ur-Rehman Saghar and Khawaja Pervez, manages to come up with the best filmi album of the year.

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.