Before Lata Mangeshkar became the nightingale of the nation, she was a young singer listening to and learning from the songs of Noor Jahan. But Partition had already sent the latter to Pakistan while Mangeshkar was finding a foothold in the industry Noor Jahan had left.

Just about four years after the hard lines were drawn, Mangeshkar visited Amritsar with composer C Ramchandra to record a song for Kidar Sharma’s Jhanjhar (1953) and rang up her idol who lived in Lahore about 50 km away. After the two spoke, an urge to meet took over. But neither had the visas needed to cross the newly drawn border. Diplomatic channels were brought in to arrange the meeting.

Today, one can’t fathom a permission such as this. But in 1951, in the no-man’s-land between India and Pakistan at the Attari-Wagah border, two of the greatest singers of the Subcontinent embraced and wept.…