The 23rd death anniversary of Pakistan’s famous playback singer Mala is being observed on Wednesday. Mala was born in Faisalabad on November 9, 1939 as Naseem Nazli. She was interested in singing and music from a very young age. Her elder sister happened to be her first music teacher and Naseem learnt the essentials of music from her. She started her career somewhere in late fifties and sang more than 300 songs in an almost two-decades-long singing career. “Mala sang many super hit songs in the 1960s and 1970s,” said Radio Pakistan. Her first Urdu film was “Suraj Mukhi” in which she changed her name to Mala and sang a simple Urdu composition‚ Aaya re dekho (1962). However, Mala’s greatest accomplishment was Akele na jana. In 1962, she won the Nigar Award for best singer for the film ‘Ishq pe zor nahi’. In 1965, she won the Nigar Award again, this time for the film Naila. The last days of Mala were fraught with loneliness and misery. She found herself in the midst of deep financial crisis. Mala faded out of the popular music scene towards the late seventies and died on March 6‚ 1990.