इशारा

A 1943 Hindi social drama directed by J.K. Nanda, featuring Prithviraj Kapoor opposite a teenaged Suraiya in her first outing as a leading lady. Though documentation of the plot is now scarce, the film is remembered chiefly as one of the great musical successes of its year — the tenth highest-grossing Indian release of 1943.

Khurshid Anwar's debut score gave Hindi cinema nine distinctly flavoured songs to lyrics by D.N. Madhok. The standouts are the evergreen 'Panghat pe muraliya baje' in Suraiya's young voice and the much-loved duet 'Baghon mein koyal boli', alongside numbers for Gauhar Sultana (brought from Lucknow for the film), Vatsala Kumthekar, Rajkumari and G.M. Durrani. The score's success made Anwar a name to reckon with.

Khurshid Anwar reportedly brought the singer Gauhar Sultana from Lucknow specially for this film. Ishaara marked the start of his frequent collaboration with director J.K. Nanda, a partnership that would continue across the decade.

Ishaara is a landmark on two counts. It was the Hindi-film debut of composer Khwaja Khurshid Anwar, whose nine compositions established him overnight as a sought-after music director and began his long association with director J.K. Nanda. It was also the film in which a fourteen-year-old Suraiya stepped up from child singer to leading lady, singing for herself — her first commercial success and the launch of one of the most celebrated singing-star careers of the 1940s.

Through 'Panghat pe muraliya baje' and 'Baghon mein koyal boli', Ishaara remains a fixture in any account of Khurshid Anwar's artistry and of Suraiya's rise. For Anwar it was the foundation of a celebrated career that later flourished in Pakistani cinema; for Suraiya it was the threshold of stardom.