Pakistani composer and musician Arshad Mahmud writes about his long collaborative friendship with the singer who captivated the sub-continent with her enchanting voice.
Farooq Qaiser’s creations were larger than life in many ways | Guddu Film Archive
We whiled away the hours chatting well past midnight, Farooq Qaiser and I, on the bus from Isfahan to Tehran.
It was almost the last leg of the National College of Arts tour of Iran, with Afghanistan still to come. Farooq was among the 30 students who made the fascinating journey in that fateful March of 1971, all of us quite unaware of the horrifying saga unfolding in East Pakistan.
He was studying textile design and had caught my eye with the hilarious skits he and his pal Shahid Nadeem performed at the college campfire. He listened avidly as I described the satire on British television and the humour of Jacques Tati. His ability to understand human frailties and the vulnerability of the underdog, later exemplified through his skits on stage, was evident even then.