Nayyara Noor

It was sometime in the early 1970s, when PTV enjoyed monopoly and presented some fine programmes, that we saw a girl-next-door type, looking somewhat emaciated, regaling music lovers with lovely ditties in programmes like Akkar Bakkar, Such Gup and Tal Matol. As she crooned numbers like Miraji’s geet“Barkha ke lakhon teer dil per kaise sahoon mein”, with full-throated ease, one was struck by the limpid flow and mellifluousness in her renditions.

The singer, no prizes for guessing, was none other than Nayyara Noor. It was the period when her favourite singers Noor Jehan and Farida Khanum reigned supreme. This youngster didn’t offer visual treats like nakhras or nirad and yet won admiration.

But it was not until the launch of the Nayyara sings Faiz album, jointly produced by the poet’s talented son-in-law Shoaib Hashmi and EMI, the recording company, as a birthday gift for the great poet in 1976, that she earned recognition as a singer. The lovely compositions by Shahid Toosy and Arshad Mahmood, featuring in the album, were sung with intensity of emotions by Noor. Also included in the LP was a duet“Barkha barse chat per”, a rare Hindi poem by Faiz, which she rendered with her husband Sheharyar Zaidi.

Noor was born in Guwahati (Assam) in 1950 in a family which had migrated from Amritsar. She is still haunted by the lush greenery outside her home and on the nearby hills that seemed like sentinels guarding the landscape. As night fell, glow worms wafted in the air by the dozens. The menacing snakes that lurked around were the only spoilt sports.

It was in 1957 (or 1958, she is not sure) that Noor migrated to Pakistan with her mother and her siblings and settled down in Lahore. Her father had to stay back until 1993 because of their immovable properties. He was a confirmed Muslim Leaguer and had played host to the Quaid-e-Azam on his trip to Assam before Partition.

“Education was the be-all and end-all of our existence but music was the main source of entertainment,” she says and goes on to add that Kanan Bala and Begum Akhtar, were their all time favourites. Lata Mangeshkar was, of course, a passion with everyone.

It was once at a musical evening at her alma mater, National College of Arts, that while singing the immortal Lata bhajan “Jo tum todo piya” from Jhanak Jhanak Payal Baaje that she attracted the attention of Prof Asrar of Islamia College whose knowledge of music was phenomenal. He spotted talents in Noor and became the main source of encouragement in her formative years. “He was a very fine singer himself and was steeped in classical music,” says Noor, who hastens to add that he also composed songs. “I was lucky to have had the opportunity of singing some of his numbers in my early days.”

It was music that was responsible for her tying the nuptial knot with Sheharyar Zaidi. They had been keen competitors in inter-collegiate music contests where Noor invariably bagged the first prize, while he, representing Hailey College of Commerce, had to settle for the second. A more film-like situation arose when the two met for the first time in a gramophone record shop. They were both hunting for Begum Akhar’s discs. The rest, as they say, is history.

Noor can be classified as a gifted singer, she doesn’t lose the track of the surs (musical notes) even though she has not had her groundings in classical music. When asked if she regrets the fact, she replies “Music has been a passion with me but never been my top priority. I was a student and a daughter first and a singer later. After my marriage my primary roles have been those of a wife and a mother.” Making money has been of a secondary consideration for her. She seldom went on musical tours and was very choosey about live performances. In her salad days she could have minted money but that would have meant not paying due attention to her children. I remember in the evenings she used to religiously monitor her children’s homework, whenever I paid her a visit. This was after the family had shifted to Karachi.

While on classical music, she feels that the Ustads and Pandits who indulge in guttural gymnastics are doing our rich heritage a great disservice. “They should bring out the subtleties and nuances of the ragas by singing them softly instead of using long drawn non-aesthetic taans.”

Noor’s finest work has been for television and the composers who got the best out of her included Arshad Mehmood and Javed Allahditta. She is in her element on the small screen, whether recording for serials like Tansen or title songs such as “Chalo us koh per” or “Mujhe wida kar” or singing ghazals like “Aei jazba-e-dil gar mein chahoon” or geets like “Phir sawan rut ki pawan chali”.

We tend to forget a priceless album of hers, which was titled Yadon Ke Saye. It featured songs from the New Theatres’ movies, which were originally recorded in the voice of Kanan Bala in the late 1930s and early 1940s. They were available once only on the antiquated 78RPM records. Her husband spent a lot of time unearthing the original numbers. Since the records were scratchy some words could not be deciphered so they had to approach people with sound knowledge of Hindi, since they were all geets and not ghazals. A violinist cum arranger, Javed Iqbal did a very fine job. He made it a point to use only actual musical instruments instead of taking a short cut by employing a synthesiser.

While on Yadon Ke Saye, I may add that when Sultan Arshad, who is very much into film music, played the song “Unka ishara jaan se pyar” from the movie Pehli Nazar to the veteran composer Anil Biswas, he was swept off his feet. “I wish she had been around when I composed the song in the forties. I would have happily used her as a playback singer.” Anilda, as he was fondly called, autographed the inlay card of the cassette, featuring the number, for her and complimented her on the ‘lovely rendition’.

Noor sang for the radio initially but gave TV much more time and attention. Her film songs, though fewer in number, are no less memorable. She regrets that maestro Khurshid Anwar was in his twilight years when he got Noor to lend her voice to his compositions in Shirin Farhad, which clearly were not among his best. She was to sing for his last movie Tansen, but before he could have gone ahead, he passed away.

Composers Khaleel Ahmad and Nisar Bazmi used her talents effectively but the one who drew the best out of her was Robin Ghosh. Incidentally, the last movie that she sang for, Dooriyan (1984) had a scintillating score. Noor won the Best Singer’s Award for a song which she fails to recall.

This writer feels that her best film number was “Roothay ho tum, tumko kaise manaoon piya”, composed by Ghosh for Aaina. Based on a popular Bengali tune, the sweet-sounding number was rare in the sense that while most Noor numbers were poignant, this was a highly effervescent ditty.

“Had Robin sahib not migrated to Bangladesh I would have continued to sing for films,” she says.

While her husband has of late achieved much success as a supporting actor on TV as well as a model, Noor has distanced herself from recording songs. “There is a time for everyone to call it a day and do so gracefully, rather than be labelled a spent force,” says Noor.

She avoids interviews as she feels that she has been misquoted in the past. And as for TV interviews she laments that the interviewers don’t do their homework before entering the studios.

She remembers a number of people fondly. Some of them are unfortunately no more. The name on top of the list is Faiz Ahmed Faiz. When I was interviewing her last year for the centenary issue of Dawn dedicated to the greatest Urdu poet of the second half of the last century, I asked her “What is that one trait in Faiz as a person that you liked the most?”

“His silence. I think that sums up the great man’s personality. It was not what an Urdu poet, Nasir Kazmi perhaps, once said that he was lonely even in company. Faiz sahib was one person who was never alone even in his loneliness. He loved company and he also loved to listen to people. He was never there to approve or disapprove people. He liked to hear different points of view and gave his own opinion only when he was asked to do so. In fact I would go on to say all that he had to convey he did it so articulately through his pen, both as a poet and as a journalist. I can safely conclude that his silence measured the depth of his personality.

“In the mid-seventies his house in Block H of Model Town, Lahore, was open to one and all. It was there that as a member of a young team of singers and composers I got to spend some invaluable time and meet eminent men of letters such as Soofi Tabbassum, Muneer Niazi, Ahsan Danish, Ejaz Batalvi, Intizar Husain and Munnoo Bhai, all of whom came to meet him.

“We were in those days doing Shoaib Hashmi’s (Faiz’s son-in-law’s) TV programme, Such Gup for PTV. When I say we, I mean his daughter Salima Hashmi, Farooq Qaiser, composers Shahid Toosy and Arshad Mahmud, my husband to be – Sheharyar Zaidi, and, of course, yours truly.

I remember quite distinctly that Faiz sahib sat on the sofa smoking cigarette after cigarette, while Shahid and Arshad set his poems to music and the two singers, me and Sheharyar, sang them with gay abandon. While negotiating some difficult and even not so difficult notes I would steal a glance at him only to find him smiling affectionately and encouragingly. It seemed he was enjoying those moments no less. His was, I think, the world’s most disarming smile.”

If you know Noor well you will realise that she is a delightful company. Her sense of humour is sparkling and, what is more, she mimics people, well known and not so well known alike, leaving her audience in splits.

Her two sons, Ali, who does voice-overs, and Jaafer, the composer, are well settled in their professions. Her role as a mother has been overshadowed by her position as a grandmother. Of the two granddaughters, Inaya is five, while Azmina is six-months-old.

“Inaya is quite chirpy. The word ‘dadi’, when she utters, is music to my ears,” says the woman whose name has been synonymous with melody.

Fifty years on, everyone still wants a piece of Marilyn Monroe

“They’re one of a number of pairs she had,” says curator Dwight Bowers, gently lifting them out of the beige steel cabinet they share with Christopher Reeves’ Superman costume and the 10-gallon hat that J.R. wore in “Dallas.” “They’re white kid. They’re very tiny and petite. And they show the decorousness of the 1950s,” he explained. “There’s a stain of ink on the left one … perhaps it came from giving an autograph to someone.” Donated by a private collector, the gloves make up the entire Marilyn Monroe collection at the publicly-funded Smithsonian Institution, the world’s largest network of museums and, in principle, repository of all things Americana.

Bowers, who plans to include the gloves in an forthcoming Smithsonian exhibition on American popular culture, said it’s “logical” for the museum to hold more Monroe memorabilia.
“But Hollywood material and Hollywood celebrities are big business in the auction world,” he told AFP in the windowless storeroom that’s packed floor to ceiling with show-business artifacts from vaudeville to today.

“Private collectors are part of our competition – and private collectors have a much bigger budget than we have.” Fifty years after her death, demand for anything related to Hollywood’s original blonde bombshell – from the dresses she wore to the magazine covers she graced – is stronger than ever. And it’s more global as well.

Many choice items can be seen at the Hollywood Museum in Los Angeles, where a handful of private collectors have pooled their most prized Monroe objects for a summer-long public exhibition.

Portrait taken in 1962 of American actress Marilyn Monroe during her last movie “Something’s got to give” directed by George Cukor, which remained unfinished.

It’s a wide-ranging show, from the mortgage paperwork on Monroe’s house to never-before-seen photographs and a host of garments like the black silk crepe dress she wore on her honeymoon with baseball legend Joe DiMaggio.

“It had been in storage for 35 years,” Hollywood Museum founder Donelle Dadigan said. “When we received it, you knew who it belonged to, because the Chanel Number Five perfume still lingered… It was almost magical.” The bulk of Monroe’s personal belongings went on the auction block at Christie’s in New York in October 1999 at a historic two-day estate sale that raked in $13.4 million.

“They literally had everything from pots and pans to her brassieres,” recalled Clark Kidder, a collector of Monroe-related magazines in Wisconsin and author of a 2001 guide to Monroe memorabilia who attended the sale.

The most expensive item then was a diamond-studded platinum eternity band, a gift from DiMaggio, her second husband, that Christie’s experts had estimated at $50,000 tops. It sold for $772,000 and it’s likely worth much more today.

Monroe’s baby grand piano went, too, for $662,500, along with everything else from a pair of bikinis and a set of gym equipment to her driver’s license – as well as the gloves that eventually wound up in the Smithsonian.

Such prices today would be considered bargains, due in part to the globalization of the memorabilia market and an influx of cash-rich and reclusive Asian and Gulf collectors for whom price is no object.
“Some of the top prices for Marilyn Monroe memorabilia, in the seven figures, you may end up finding in China, in Japan, in the Middle East … it’s just extraordinary,” Dadigan told AFP in a telephone interview.

Last year, in Macau, Los Angeles auctioneers Julien’s sold a gown that Monroe wore in the movie “River of No Return” for $516,600 and a signed nude from her “red velvet” session with photographer Tom Kelly for $16,250.

Earlier in 2011, the billowing dress that Monroe wore over that famously breezy subway grating in “The Seven-Year Itch” sold for a staggering $4.6 million – plus commission – in Los Angeles.
The seller was the actress Debbie Reynolds, who at 79 had no more room for her collection of 35,000 Hollywood movie costumes. The buyer, as is so often the case at auctions, opted for discretion and bid by telephone.

“A lot of these high-profile pieces, when they come up for auction, are going to the Asian countries,” Los Angeles collector Scott Fortner, whose own Monroe objects are part of the Hollywood Museum exhibition,

 
“I find it disappointing that some of these pieces literally just disappear and we have no idea where they go,” added Fortner, who has catalogued his entire collection – from a feather boa to make-up and eye drops – online.

Fortner sees himself not so much as a collector than as a custodian of the memory of a timeless motion picture icon. He’s especially proud of one item in his possession – Monroe’s humble Brownie snapshot camera.

“I have always found that piece very, very intriguing,” he said. “It’s the childhood camera of one of the most photographed women, if not the most photographed woman, in the world. There’s an interesting bit of irony there.”

Nathuram Godse - His Last Speech

*** The pic is not real, taken from movie Gandhi

JANUARY 30th, 1949 - The Mahatma was assassinated by a man called Naturam Godse.
After he shot him, instead of running away, he stood his ground and surrounded. He said, "No one should think that Gandhi was killed by a madman"

One of the best speeches of All time, which is compared to Socrates's speech in his trial.
The Judge was astonished by his speech and commented that if India had followed the Jury system of giving judgments, Godse would have been adjudicated as "Not Guilty" by the Jury, cause after the speech, the whole audience was in tears.

This is the speech given by Nathuram Godse in the court in his last trial for the murder of Mahatma Gandhi

Born in a devotional Brahmin family, I instinctively came to revere Hindu religion, Hindu history and Hindu culture. I had, therefore, been intensely proud of Hinduism as a whole. As I grew up I developed a tendency to free thinking unfettered by any superstitious allegiance to any isms, political or religious. That is why I worked actively for the eradication of untouchability and the caste system based on birth alone. I openly joined anti-caste movements and maintained that all Hindus were of equal status as to rights, social and religious and should be considered high or low on merit alone and not through the accident of birth in a particular caste or profession. I used publicly to take part in organized anti-caste dinners in which thousands of Hindus, Brahmins, Kshatriyas, Vaisyas, Chamars and Bhangis participated. We broke the caste rules and dined in the company of each other.



I have read the speeches and writings of Dadabhai Nairoji, Vivekanand, Gokhale, Tilak, along with the books of ancient and modern history of India and some prominent countries like England, France, America and' Russia. Moreover I studied the tenets of Socialism and Marxism. But above all I studied very closely whatever Veer Savarkar and Gandhiji had written and spoken, as to my mind these two ideologies have contributed more to the moulding of the thought and action of the Indian people during the last thirty years or so, than any other single factor has done.



All this reading and thinking led me to believe it was my first duty to serve Hindudom and Hindus both as a patriot and as a world citizen. To secure the freedom and to safeguard the just interests of some thirty crores (300 million) of Hindus would automatically constitute the freedom and the well being of all India, one fifth of human race. This conviction led me naturally to devote myself to the Hindu Sanghtanist ideology and programme, which alone, I came to believe, could win and preserve the national independence of Hindustan, my Motherland, and enable her to render true service to humanity as well.



Since the year 1920, that is, after the demise of Lokamanya Tilak, Gandhiji's influence in the Congress first increased and then became supreme. His activities for public awakening were phenomenal in their intensity and were reinforced by the slogan of truth and non-violence, which he paraded ostentatiously before the country. No sensible or enlightened person could object to those slogans. In fact there is nothing new or original in them. They are implicit in every constitutional public movement. But it is nothing but a mere dream if you imagine that the bulk of mankind is, or can ever become, capable of scrupulous adherence to these lofty principles in its normal life from day to day. In fact, honour, duty and love of one's own kith and kin and country might often compel us to disregard non-violence and to use force. I could never conceive that an armed resistance to an aggression is unjust. I would consider it a religious and moral duty to resist and, if possible, to overpower such an enemy by use of force. [In the Ramayana] Rama killed Ravana in a tumultuous fight and relieved Sita. [In the Mahabharata], Krishna killed Kansa to end his wickedness; and Arjuna had to fight and slay quite a number of his friends and relations including the revered Bhishma because the latter was on the side of the aggressor. It is my firm belief that in dubbing Rama, Krishna and Arjuna as guilty of violence, the Mahatma betrayed a total ignorance of the springs of human action.



In more recent history, it was the heroic fight put up by Chhatrapati Shivaji that first checked and eventually destroyed the Muslim tyranny in India. It was absolutely essentially for Shivaji to overpower and kill an aggressive Afzal Khan, failing which he would have lost his own life. In condemning history's towering warriors like Shivaji, Rana Pratap and Guru Gobind Singh as misguided patriots, Gandhiji has merely exposed his self-conceit. He was, paradoxical, as it may appear, a violent pacifist who brought untold calamities on the country in the name of truth and non-violence, while Rana Pratap, Shivaji and the Guru will remain enshrined in the hearts of their countrymen forever for the freedom they brought to them.



The accumulating provocation of thirty-two years, culminating in his last pro-Muslim fast, at last goaded me to the conclusion that the existence of Gandhi should be brought to an end immediately. Gandhi had done very well in South Africa to uphold the rights and well being of the Indian community there. But when he finally returned to India he developed a subjective mentality under which he alone was to be the final judge of what was right or wrong. If the country wanted his leadership, it had to accept his infallibility; if it did not, he would stand aloof from the Congress and carry on his own way. Against such an attitude there can be no halfway house. Either Congress had to surrender its will to his and had to be content with playing second fiddle to all his eccentricity, whimsicality, metaphysics and primitive vision, or it had to carry on without him. He alone was the Judge of everyone and everything; he was the master brain guiding the civil disobedience movement; no other could know the technique of that movement. He alone knew when to begin and when to withdraw it. The movement might succeed or fail, it might bring untold disaster and political reverses but that could make no difference to the Mahatma's infallibility. 'A Satyagrahi can never fail' was his formula for declaring his own infallibility and nobody except himself knew what a Satyagrahi is.



Thus, the Mahatma became the judge and jury in his own cause. These childish insanities and obstinacies, coupled with a most severe austerity of life, ceaseless work and lofty character made Gandhi formidable and irresistible. Many people thought that his politics were irrational but they had either to withdraw from the Congress or place their intelligence at his feet to do with, as he liked. In a position of such absolute irresponsibility Gandhi was guilty of blunder after blunder, failure after failure, disaster after disaster.



Gandhi's pro-Muslim policy is blatantly in his perverse attitude on the question of the national language of India. It is quite obvious that Hindi has the most prior claim to be accepted as the premier language. In the beginning of his career in India, Gandhi gave a great impetus to Hindi but as he found that the Muslims did not like it, he became a champion of what is called Hindustani. Everybody in India knows that there is no language called Hindustani; it has no grammar; it has no vocabulary. It is a mere dialect; it is spoken, but not written. It is a bastard tongue and crossbreed between Hindi and Urdu, and not even the Mahatma's sophistry could make it popular. But in his desire to please the Muslims he insisted that Hindustani alone should be the national language of India. His blind followers, of course, supported him and the so-called hybrid language began to be used. The charm and purity of the Hindi language was to be prostituted to please the Muslims. All his experiments were at the expense of the Hindus.



From August 1946 onwards the private armies of the Muslim League began a massacre of the Hindus. The then Viceroy, Lord Wavell, though distressed at what was happening, would not use his powers under the Government of India Act of 1935 to prevent the rape, murder and arson. The Hindu blood began to flow from Bengal to Karachi with some retaliation by the Hindus. The Interim Government formed in September was sabotaged by its Muslim League members right from its inception, but the more they became disloyal and treasonable to the government of which they were a part, the greater was Gandhi's infatuation for them. Lord Wavell had to resign as he could not bring about a settlement and he was succeeded by Lord Mountbatten. King Log was followed by King Stork.



The Congress, which had boasted of its nationalism and socialism, secretly accepted Pakistan literally at the point of the bayonet and abjectly surrendered to Jinnah. India was vivisected and one-third of the Indian territory became foreign land to us from August 15, 1947. Lord Mountbatten came to be described in Congress circles as the greatest Viceroy and Governor-General this country ever had. The official date for handing over power was fixed for June 30, 1948, but Mountbatten with his ruthless surgery gave us a gift of vivisected India ten months in advance. This is what Gandhi had achieved after thirty years of undisputed dictatorship and this is what Congress party calls 'freedom' and 'peaceful transfer of power'. The Hindu-Muslim unity bubble was finally burst and a theocratic state was established with the consent of Nehru and his crowd and they have called 'freedom won by them with sacrifice' - whose sacrifice? When top leaders of Congress, with the consent of Gandhi, divided and tore the country - which we consider a deity of worship - my mind was filled with direful anger.



One of the conditions imposed by Gandhi for his breaking of the fast unto death related to the mosques in Delhi occupied by the Hindu refugees. But when Hindus in Pakistan were subjected to violent attacks he did not so much as utter a single word to protest and censure the Pakistan Government or the Muslims concerned. Gandhi was shrewd enough to know that while undertaking a fast unto death, had he imposed for its break some condition on the Muslims in Pakistan, there would have been found hardly any Muslims who could have shown some grief if the fast had ended in his death. It was for this reason that he purposely avoided imposing any condition on the Muslims. He was fully aware of from the experience that Jinnah was not at all perturbed or influenced by his fast and the Muslim League hardly attached any value to the inner voice of Gandhi.



Gandhi is being referred to as the Father of the Nation. But if that is so, he had failed his paternal duty inasmuch as he has acted very treacherously to the nation by his consenting to the partitioning of it. I stoutly maintain that Gandhi has failed in his duty. He has proved to be the Father of Pakistan. His inner-voice, his spiritual power and his doctrine of non-violence of which so much is made of, all crumbled before Jinnah's iron will and proved to be powerless.



Briefly speaking, I thought to myself and foresaw I shall be totally ruined, and the only thing I could expect from the people would be nothing but hatred and that I shall have lost all my honour, even more valuable than my life, if I were to kill Gandhiji. But at the same time I felt that the Indian politics in the absence of Gandhiji would surely be proved practical, able to retaliate, and would be powerful with armed forces. No doubt, my own future would be totally ruined, but the nation would be saved from the inroads of Pakistan. People may even call me and dub me as devoid of any sense or foolish, but the nation would be free to follow the course founded on the reason which I consider to be necessary for sound nation-building. After having fully considered the question, I took the final decision in the matter, but I did not speak about it to anyone whatsoever. I took courage in both my hands and I did fire the shots at Gandhiji on 30th January 1948, on the prayer-grounds of Birla House.



I do say that my shots were fired at the person whose policy and action had brought rack and ruin and destruction to millions of Hindus. There was no legal machinery by which such an offender could be brought to book and for this reason I fired those fatal shots.



I bear no ill will towards anyone individually but I do say that I had no respect for the present government owing to their policy, which was unfairly favourable towards the Muslims. But at the same time I could clearly see that the policy was entirely due to the presence of Gandhi. I have to say with great regret that Prime Minister Nehru quite forgets that his preachings and deeds are at times at variances with each other when he talks about India as a secular state in season and out of season, because it is significant to note that Nehru has played a leading role in the establishment of the theocratic state of Pakistan, and his job was made easier by Gandhi's persistent policy of appeasement towards the Muslims.



I now stand before the court to accept the full share of my responsibility for what I have done and the judge would, of course, pass against me such orders of sentence as may be considered proper. But I would like to add that I do not desire any mercy to be shown to me, nor do I wish that anyone else should beg for mercy on my behalf. My confidence about the moral side of my action has not been shaken even by the criticism levelled against it on all sides. I have no doubt that honest writers of history will weigh my act and find the true value thereof some day in future.


-NATHURAM GODSE

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