This April, Nazia Hassan would have been 46 years old and I am suddenly wistful for a wonderful summer in Dalhousie when I first heard her sing. It was around 1981 and my nani, addicted to Pakistani soaps like Ankahi had really no patience for Doordarshan but even she had to sit and watch when a Pakistani teenager, wearing school girl plaits and chewing her lower lip nervously was interviewed by Tabassum on Phool Khile Hain Gulshan Gulshan, India’s first celebrity talk show. She was asked to sing a few lines from the song that had made her an overnight sensation and was going to win her a Filmfare award and she hit a high note and stopped. I still remember what Tabassum had said, “Aisa  laga waqt ruk gaya!”

Aap Jaisa Koi, a sizzling  dance number from Firoz Khan’s Qurbani had become a rage and Nazia and Biddu were unlike anything that had ever happened to Hindi film music.

Iconic singers like Noor Jehan had been a part of our shared legacy of music and Hindi film music was no stranger to Western flavours but something unprecedented had happened with the collaboration between Nazia, Firoz Khan and Biddu.

Suddenly, a voice that sounded young was really young. Nazia’s voice had ocean salt and the twang of an acoustic guitar and the gentle fizz of  soda pop. She suddenly became the voice that sang of us and to our sense of youth. She became the face of the kind of music we had never heard before. And what a face it was. To say that we fell in love with Nazia not just for her voice but also because she looked like an angel would not be far fetched.

She had a soft-focus appeal. An aura of good breeding, refinement, elegance and authentic grace and yet that voice was so unaffectedly sensuous. The thing about her as is the case with all instant success stories, was that she was unrepeatable and unique. Nazia Hassan remains an unequalled phenomenon because till date no one can sing Aap Jaisa Koi like her or look as utterly guileless as she did while singing it.

In retrospect, she was also our window into Pakistan. Just like Ankahi and other serials which took us into Pakistani homes, restaurants, office buildings and showed us people, life stories and cities not unlike ours, Nazia too was the face of young Pakistan. Maybe even the face and the voice of all young Indians and Pakistanis growing up abroad and longing to sing their own kind of music.

Biddu channeled her voice into songs that caught the pulse of two nations that wanted to celebrate their roots but also wanted to show that their music was cool, international and could be played anywhere in the world. Biddu, let us not forget, despite his Indian roots had worked with Jimmy James, Tina Charles and Carl Douglas and he and Nazia synergised to create music that was not just a flash- in-the-pan success in a Hindi film album.  Together they were the soul and the sound of Asian pop.

Credit is also due to Firoz Khan because at a time when the mature divas of Hindi film music ruled, he dared to trust a maverick composer and a teenaged singer to create a new sound. I still remember how young people queued up before HMV stores to buy Disco Deewane (tuned again by Biddu and sung by Nazia and her brother Zohaib)  and this was before the time of marketing overkill and pre-packaged success stories. There were no music videos whetting our appetite. Nazia and Biddu by now were a brand that sold itself. And sell, it did.

Disco Deewane was the largest selling album in Asia and the first South Asian album, according to trivia,  to strike gold in Brazil, Russia, South Africa and Indonesia. Nazia’s posters were collectibles and even the damp response to Biddu’s first attempt at film direction,  could not stop people from loving the  music of Star. Boom Boom till date, remains a classic that cannot be bettered by remixes. Young Tarang, her next collaboration with Zohaib and Biddu was a big hit too and though she recorded more albums and worked extensively in the Pakistan television industry, there was more to Nazia’s life than music. She went to law school and later worked with the UN.

Her personal life according to reports was not a happy one despite a marriage and a child.  A sad, heart-breaking thing that because she was the poster girl of un-selfconscious perfection. The kind of girl anyone could adore and cherish forever. The girl, the entire sub-continent was in love with. She had made so many people happy not just with her music but her work for assorted causes.

Her charity endeavours remained in news far after her music stopped and we in India always remembered her fondly. That is why it came as a shock when we learnt of her battle with lung cancer and her death at the age of 35 in 2000. It is with a  niggling sense of loss that we still look back and see a young girl in denim overalls, a mike in hand, hair plaited childishly, singing in a voice that went beyond many borders, broke many walls, stereotypes  and created memories that no one and nothing can replace.  We miss you, Nazia. Rest in peace and keep singing, wherever you are.

Reema Moudgil is the author of Perfect Eight. (http://www.flipkart.com/perfect-eight-reema-moudgil-book-9380032870) . More about her in Story Wallahs.  Also check other books by Unboxed Writers in our Store.