Biography
Sabira Begum better known as Asha Posley was the first heroine of Pakistani films. Asha Posley was the daughter of music composer Inayat Ali Nath, who worked with His Master’s Voice in Delhi, and the sister of renowned film playback singer Kausar Parveen and another sisters Rani Kiran and Najma Begum. She started singing at the age of four and used to sing in children’s radio programmes at All India Radio in Delhi. Asha’s younger brother Shamsher Ali was a musician. She started performing in theatres plays and dramas in Urdu and Punjabi. During that time her theatres dramas became very popular and she was trained in singing by her father Inayat Ali Nath. She was skilled in singing ghazal, geet, tappe, thumri and dadra.
In 1940 she moved from Delhi to Lahore along with her family. She accompanied her father to the studios to watch the shooting of director B. R Sethi’s 1942 film Gawandhi and he offered her a role in the film which she accepted.
Asha Posley died on 26 March 1998 at Lahore, Pakistan at age 70.
