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at 02:43:46 pm on December 28, 2007
He was the last of our vintage composers for whom both KL Saigal and Noorjehan sang. What an Anmol Ghadi it was when Malka-e-Tarannum Noorjehan returned to India, after 33 years, to enslave the Shanmukhnanda Hall audience with Naushad’s raag pahadi notes of Aawaaz de kahaan hai.
On February 11, 1982, Noorjehan singing this 1946 duet solo – under Naushad’s ‘pre-Partition’ baton – is a happening I mistily recall this Christmas Day marking the mausiqaar’s 88th birth anniversary. Dilip Kumar to her right, Naushad to her left, Noorjehan mesmerising viewers that ‘nite without end’.
Lata Mangeshkar, too, was there to render – before Noorjehan, her vocal ideal Shyam Sundar’s Bazaar classic, Saajan kee galiyaan, in quintessential pahadi. As our diva materialised on stage, it was a hark back to those Andaz days when Lata almost sounded like Noorjehan in Tod diyaa dil.
“When Lata first came to me,” Naushad reminisced, “I just made her read Uthaye jaa unke sitam, from Mehboob’s Andaz, 10 times, 20 times. After that, if Lata’s Uthaye jaa, in Raag Kedara, still sounded Noorjehanish, it’s a tribute to the spell the Malka-e-Tarannum cast on her.”
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