Reshma

Reshma was a Pakistani folk singer whose voice carried across the India-Pakistan border. She is a cultural figure, not a figure of the Panth. She appears in this record as a child of Partition and of the shared Punjabi and Sufi song tradition of Lahore and the shrines.

Dawn reported that she was born around 1947 in Bikaner, Rajasthan, into a Banjara family, and that her tribe migrated to Karachi shortly after Partition. She had no formal education. At about the age of twelve a radio and television producer heard her singing at the shrine of Lal Shahbaz Qalandar and arranged for her to record "Laal Meri" for Radio Pakistan; it was an instant hit. Wikipedia dates that recording to 1968.

She appeared on television in the 1960s and recorded for both Pakistani and Indian films. Her best-known songs include Lambi Judai and Dama Dam Mast Qalandar (Dawn). DNA India reports that the filmmaker Subhash Ghai used her voice for Lambi Judai in the film Hero, and Wikipedia gives the year as 1983. Wikipedia adds that some of her songs carried Punjabi lyrics by Manzoor Hussain Jhalla, and that she was a passenger on the first Lahore to Amritsar bus in January 2006. Her honours included the Sitara-i-Imtiaz (Dawn).

Key moments

• About 1947: born near Bikaner; the family moves to Karachi after Partition.
• About age twelve: first heard at the shrine of Lal Shahbaz Qalandar and taken to Radio Pakistan.
• 1983: her voice is used for Lambi Judai in Hero (Wikipedia).
• 3 November 2013: dies in Lahore after a long illness with throat cancer.

What she is remembered for. She is remembered for an untrained voice, for Lambi Judai, and for a career that crossed the border through film.