Jawan hai mohabbat

Seventy-nine years old and as Gen Z as they come. Jawan hai mohabbat, sung by the glorious Noor Jehan for the 1946 “diamond jubilee” film Anmol Ghadi, is sparkly, fun and eminently hummable.

The song also has that rare quality — eternal youth. Naushad, the composer, and Tanveer Naqvi, the lyricist, both born in 1919, were in their 20s when they crafted the song. Noor Jehan, who was 20 when the film released, was a teenager when she recorded the song. Bollywood music had barely completed 15 years — the first sound film, Alam Ara, with seven songs, was released in 1931.

Anmol Ghadi, with its lost-and-found childhood sweethearts embroiled in implausible plot twists, hasn’t aged well despite being a monster hit back then, but this song remains mint-fresh.

It’s also a rare romantic number sung by a woman that’s happy at a time when most female love songs were sad and squeaky. Noor Jehan’s voice is robust and yet has rizz. She hits both high and low notes with the ease of an elevator ride. Her diction is perfect: every word is crystal clear, buffed to a high shine.

Small wonder that the young singing superstar who left for Pakistan after Partition was crowned the Mallika-e-Tarannum (Queen of Melody) there and could count Lata Mangeshkar and Madonna among her legion of fans.

Naqvi left for Pakistan too. But he left Bollywood with rust-proof lyrics:

Jawan hai mohabbat, haseen hai zamana

Lutaya hai dil ne khushi ka khazana

Mohabbat karein, khush rahein, muskurayein

Na soche hamein kya kahega zamana

Naushad, of course, went on to become one of Bollywood’s greats, infusing Hindustani classical and folk elements into film music and composing memorable numbers like Pyar kiya toh darna kya, Tere husn ki kya tareef karun, Tu Ganga ki mauj, main Jamuna ka dhara....

In 1983, Noor Jehan visited India for the first and last time after Partition, and in a show in Mumbai (then Bombay), performed her poignant Awaz de kahan hai, also from Anmol Ghadi. You can catch her interview with her Jugnu (1947) co-star Dilip Kumar for Doordarshan on YouTube, where she speaks on her varied musical journey, among many other things, after leaving India.

The world has changed unrecognisably since 1946. And yet Jawan hai mohabbat has stayed irrepressibly youthful. As Bob Dylan would’ve said, forever young.