At the start of her singing career, she needed to stand on a stool to be able to reach the microphone but then she went on in her comparatively short career to become the last of Bollywood's three singing superstars. In her heyday, Suraiya was so popular that she had to stop attending her film premieres to forestall the frenzy her presence evoked.
Yet, at the peak of her career as an actress and singer where in one role, she brought Ghalib's ghazals to life for the modern generation and was complimented for it by no less than Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, Suraiya gradually withdrew from the limelight and just in her early 30s, turned her back on the tinsel world forever.
Once needing a Bombay Police detachment outside her home given the crowds her fame attracted, she, after abandoning films, spent the remaining four decades of her life in semi-seclusion, depriving the world of an angelic screen presence, whose slight air of naivete only added to her charm, and a voice, with an undernote of hesitation and tentativeness, that sounded as melodious as gently tinkling bells.
Born in Lahore on this day
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