Nur Jehan: once and forever queen
Khalid Hasan
Come December and Madam Nur Jehan would have been gone exactly five years and yet it feels like only yesterday when the world learnt that the silver voice of the once and forever queen who had brought so much joy to millions around the world for over 50 years had been stilled forever.
But Madam lives in her music, and this is not a cliché. She does indeed live. In America and Canada, there was time when you had to look far and wide for even the basic spices that go into Pakistani and Indian cooking. And neither love nor money could buy you music from our part of the world.
It was therefore a matter of great joy and excitement for me to find a long-playing record of Madam Nur Jehan in a Connecticut Avenue record store. The year was 1970 and I was in Washington on a congressional fellowship, having been given leave of absence by The Pakistan Times. Today, her music can be had anywhere in America.
The LP I bought 35 years ago, I still have and when I played it the other day, there was Madam, without a scratch, forever young. A memoir I wrote about her some years ago has just been republished by Penguin (India) in an anthology edited by Bapsi Sidhwa, called Lahore: City of Sin and Splendour. I suppose the “sin” in the title is a gesture to the more salacious-minded.
Inder Malhotra, the distinguished Indian journalist and writer, who is a friend of mine, has mailed me a copy of the book (which Ms Sidhwa should have but didn’t). He said he had bought one for himself and it had brought back to him many memories. At my request, he wrote them down and here they are in his own words and voice.
“Dear Khalid: You knew Nur Jehan extremely well and your knowledge of her is encyclopaedic. I met her only twice. So I can add very little to what you already know. However, from the time I became aware of the Indian cinema, Nur Jehan, even more than Devika Rani and Leela Chitnis, was the heroine and heartthrob of my generation. We called her ‘Baby Nur Jehan’, although she was older than me. My first impersonal encounter with her was, in some respects, the most exciting. Zeenat was what brought it about. At the time when this film was released, I was in college in a place called Sangrur in the eastern part of Punjab. There was no cinema in that lovely garden city, the capital of the princely state of Jind. The occasional arrival of a ‘touring talkie’ there used to cause tremendous excitement.
“So my brother, three friends and I waited about four weeks in the hope that the initial rush for Zeenat would subside before travelling 150 miles to Delhi to see it. We had planned to stay a day and a half, to enjoy the movie one evening, roam around the great city the next day and catch the night train to Lahore that would drop us at Jakhal from where a branch line went to Sangrur and beyond. An agonising problem about Jakhal was how to evade detection by my father who was Station Master there. We were bunking college without his knowledge, leave alone permission. In the event, we had to stay in Delhi for a whole week. For, on arrival, we were tersely told the earliest tickets we could get were for the matinee show six days later. Our hosts on whom we were scrounging were most gracious.
“On the great day when we occupied our seats, we were most annoyed. The management of the cinema — Jagat, close to Jama Masjid — had obviously played a trick on us. The hall was more than half empty though outside the ‘House Full’ sign was on display. Two of us marched up to the manager and demanded, rather aggressively, an explanation. He smiled at us and patiently said, ‘Barkhurdar, just wait and watch.’ We went back to our seats still fretting about the empty hall. We were absorbed in the movie, missing a heartbeat whenever Nur Jehan appeared on the screen, when all of a sudden there was great tumult and a virtual horde rushed in. The strains of the superlative qawwali, Aheyn na bhareen, shikwae na kiye had begun. The song over, the latecomers noisily marched out. Thus we discovered, to our consternation, that people had bought tickets for each of the shows only for Aheyn na bhareen.
“Five years later, in the summer of 1950, I had my first glimpse of her in person. After the horrendous crisis over the plight of the minorities in the two Bengals that looked like leading to an all-out India-Pakistan war, the Nehru-Liaquat Pact was signed. It averted the war and lowered the tension. Nehru decided to send a non-official goodwill delegation to Pakistan. Bhimsen Sachar, finance minister in undivided Punjab and later chief minister of East Punjab, then out of office, led it. I had accompanied the delegation as a rookie reporter.
“At a film studio in Lahore — I forget which one — the delegation came face to face with the legendary lady. She spoke respectfully to Sachar Sahib and other elders in the delegation. I was so overwhelmed by her charm that I couldn’t utter a word. She patted me on the cheek and took her leave. The next time I saw her was in the early 1980s when she spent a few days in Delhi as part of a visit to various parts of India, including Bombay. Abdul Sattar, then in his first term as a very popular ambassador of Pakistan, organised at his home a small gathering in her honour.
“It was a memorable evening. Madam was full of charm and warmth. She spoke to everyone frankly and wittily. Someone asked her how many songs she had sung and now many records she had cut. Her reply, to borrow words from you, was classic Nur Jehan: ‘Ji, mein na apne ganoon ka, na apne gunahoon ka koi hisab rakhti hoon’ (I keep no count of either my songs or my sins). When I asked whether we could have the pleasure of hearing her sing at least one ghazal, she shook her head. ‘Mera sanga tuhade pyar naal aina bhar gaya aye ke idhey wichoon koi gana nahin nikal sakda’ (Given the love you have shown me, my throat is so choked with emotion that it will not let me sing).”
Madam Nur Jehan Zindabad.