अब तो नहीं दुनिया में

A signature Noor Jehan solo from Nadaan (1943), with lyrics by Zia Sarhadi and music by Datta Korgaonkar. It is one of the film's best-documented songs and circulated widely on gramophone, helping carry the soundtrack's reputation through the year.

Korgaonkar frames the song as a slow, lament-toned ghazal-like piece, leaning on harmonium and gentle strings so that Noor Jehan's voice — supple, ornamented, and youthful — carries the entire emotional weight.

The title 'Ab To Nahin Duniya Mein' (No Longer in This World) inhabits a classical Urdu-poetry motif: the mourning of a beloved who has departed the mortal plane — or departed in the sense of emotional withdrawal — leaving the speaker without an anchor. Zia Sarhadi, who wrote the lyrics in addition to directing the film, worked in the ghazal-inflected Urdu mode, where absence and loss are the primary emotional registers. The construction 'ab to nahin' (now, no longer) uses tense as grief: the 'ab' (now) marking the border between a world that contained the beloved and this one, which does not. Datta Korgaonkar's slow, inward musical setting — harmonium, sarangi, restrained tabla — allows Noor Jehan room to ornament and sustain phrases, her voice moving through the melodic line with the unhurried authority of a classical rendition. The ghazal-adjacent character of the lyric suits Noor Jehan's formal-informal mastery: she could make a film song carry the emotional precision of a concert performance.

Nadaan (1943), directed by Zia Sarhadi — who also wrote the lyrics, a rare dual role — starred Noor Jehan, Aman, and Masood, and was the fourth highest-grossing Indian film of that year. During the making of Nadaan, music director Datta Korgaonkar was so moved by Noor Jehan's voice that he composed seven songs specifically for her, giving the film an unusually singer-centered score. 'Ab To Nahin Duniya Mein' was one of the more serious, internally focused numbers — Korgaonkar framing it as a slow ghazal-like piece, in contrast to the lighter songs in the soundtrack. By 1943, Noor Jehan had already established herself as a major singing star through her Pancholi films in Lahore (Khandaan, Yamla Jatt), and Nadaan extended that reputation in Bombay. Zia Sarhadi's lyric-writing for his own film is documented — he was a writer-director who controlled both the narrative and the lyrical content of his productions.

Noor Jehan's pre-Partition Hindi film work — of which her Nadaan (1943) songs are a key chapter — became collector's pieces on both sides of the border after 1947. When she migrated to Pakistan and became 'Mallika-e-Tarannum' (Queen of Melody), these early recordings were the only documentation of the register she had developed in Bombay. 'Ab To Nahin Duniya Mein' belongs to this body of pre-Partition work: a ghazal-mode lament that showcases the classical depth she brought to film song before the industry's post-Partition restructuring. She went on to record similar numbers in Pakistan's film industry and on concert stages, but the 1943 Bombay-era recordings are valued as artifacts of a crossroads moment in the subcontinent's music history. Radio broadcasts on All India Radio in the 1940s helped circulate this song widely.