Noor Jehan (1926-2000)
The after-dinner chat threw up myriad memories. Huma suddenly made a remark, "I think no Subcontinental figure will ever be able to lead a life like her's." She then looked at us as if daring us to disagree, but of course we knew that that indeed was the case. With her passing, the Melody Queen has deprived us of a talented and flamboyant star who was one of the few iconic links to pre-Partition South Asia.
While she had a religious following among the older generation of South Asians everywhere, I have often wondered why Noor Jehan held such a hold over the populace of Pakistan. True, she gave us beautiful numbers, but this doesn't explain the volume of tears that flowed on the day of her passing in the holy month of Ramadan, on 24 December 2000. It must have had to do with the persona she exuded, one that was fiercely patriotic. The day the India-Pakistan war broke out on 6 September 1965, the singer defied a curfew and drove alone to record her "Mere Dhool Sipahiya"—a beseechingly patriotic number.
When PTV ran "Tributes to Madam Noor Jehan", the producers were paying as much of a homage to the soulful voice as they were to the woman who was one of the pioneers of Pakistan's film industry. Noor Jehan was born Allah Wasai in 1926 at Ferozepur in undivided India. It was her mother who believed that her daughter had something exceptional to give to the world, which is what gave birth to a career beginning at age seven.