The other Khurshid Anwar
For most people, Khurshid Anwar was the great music director who scored some of the most hauntingly beautiful melodies for the movies, before 1947 in Lahore and Bombay, and after 1947 in Lahore. KL Saigal sang for him, as... Looking for Musarrat Nazir
It seems like that famous jewel in her nose, Musarrat Nazir too is lost somewhere in the Canadian wilderness. She has not sung, recorded or released a song for at least a dozen years. She has also snapped contact with all except... The return of Manto
So finally and for reasons that do not appear to have anything to do with the prime minister, who is not exactly known for his interest in Urdu literature, a stamp bearing Saadat Hasan Manto’s face has been issued by the Pakistan post,...Manto and the Saint of Chakiwara
One of the least known tributes to Saadat Hasan Manto is a memoir written by that matchless writer, Muhammad Khalid Akhtar, author of that most delightful of books, Chakiwara mein Visal , not to mention the boisterous Chacha Abdul Baqi ....The great Bard of Gujrat
Those who only associate the city of Gujrat with Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain, Chaudhry Pervez Elahi and other bandy-legged stars of Punjab’s ruling dynasty do great injustice to the city’s greatest son, Ustad Imam Din Gujrati – or to ...Naushad: fled is that music
Naushad the maestro is dead, but his music lives. If ever a cliché was true, then this one is. In 1992, Naushad, an accomplished poet who wrote in the tradition of the great masters of Urdu poetry, published a collection that he called Aathwan...Kuldip Nayar’s Sialkot
When Kuldip Nayar came to Pakistan in 1972 to interview Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, he was one of the first Indian journalists to be invited. He told me that he wanted to go to Sialkot, the city of his birth, where he had gone to school and college and ...Lahore: a musical story
Writing is difficult work and writing about music is the most difficult of all, which is why we are in Saeed Malik’s debt for having produced a book that brings together Lahore’s musical history and heritage. Considering what it was and looking . Bokhari, Lahore’s true geographer
Amrita Sher Gil’s Lahore
Amrita Sher Gil was once asked by Iqbal Singh, who was to write her biography 43 years after her death in Lahore in 1941, at the age of 28, why she had never painted a portrait of Jawaharlal Nehru, whom she knew and liked. She replied,. ...