KARACHI: Emotional scenes were witnessed on Monday evening when members of the family and close friends of singer Nayyara Noor, who passed away on Aug 20, came together to share their memories of her at an event held at the Arts Council of Pakistan to pay tribute to her.

Nayyara’s husband and actor Shehryar Zaidi said he, like a few other speakers, was finding it difficult to speak about his late wife.

He said: “Everybody knows that she was a great singer, but she and I spent 49 years together, she was a friend of mine. When I worked for PIA and often stayed late for work on overtime, I used to resist it because I wanted to reach home as soon as possible. Our [the couple’s] taste in music was also very similar. We knew all the songs from the 1930s up until the 1990s. She was a loving wife. Only a few know that she was a good mimic as well. I learned a lot of things from her. The most important thing that I learned from her was self-respect.

“In those 49 years, I never ate a cold roti. No matter what time I would return to home from work, she would make fresh rotis for me. She was a fine cook. She had tremendous respect for beggars and faqirs, never let any mendicant go empty-handed. Also, she would never let her weakness known to others because she had faith in God. She helped people out without letting them feel needy. Another quality in her was that she would never get impressed by power or money. Nayyara always spoke the truth. She never compromised on her principles. The media mentions some of the facts about her wrong, for example, her date of birth is Dec 25 not the one that social media has come up with,” he said.

Nayyara’s son Naad-e-Ali said the other day [Sunday] was a Pakistan-versus-India cricket match. Before that, the last time the match took place, the watchman of the neighbourhood where they live rang their doorbell to say that a loud noise was coming out of their house. It was because during those matches they used to get super excited and Nayyara would be part of it. “Sunday’s match was incomplete.”

He said after burying his mother when he stepped away a bit from the graveyard, no friend who came to extend their condolences to him used the word ‘aunty’; all of them addressed her as ammi or amma. “She was everyone’s mother. She loved everyone.”

President of the Arts Council Ahmed Shah said it was an honour for the council that Nayyara was a member of its governing body for many years. Oftentimes they would ask her to preside over our meetings. During the recent vaccination drive he requested her to resume singing. She came up with reasons not to do so.

Salima Hashmi went down memory lane when in the 1970s in Lahore they did a TV show Sach Gup created by Shoaib Hashmi in which Arshad Mahmud and Shahid Toosi composed songs for Nayyara to sing. She also remembered Farooq Qaiser on the occasion. She added that “Nayyara’s persona needed to be redesigned” [for TV].

In between the speeches, a video was shown which warmed the hearts of the audience because it had snippets from Nayyara’s life including bits of some of her memorable songs.

Sultan Arshad, Karamat Ali and Munawwar Saeed also spoke. Music composer Arshad Mahmud moderated the event.

Published in Dawn, August 31st, 2022