If there was a contest for the most popular piece of music in South Asia, Aaj Jaaney Ki Zid Na Karo would arguably be right up there at the top. The Farida Khanum version, that is. Khanum’s voice and Fayyaz Hashmi’s words together are spellbinding. Hashmi was a poet and dialogue writer for films; he wrote this song for a 1974 Pakistani film. Yet it is the famous 1980s recording of Khanum’s slow rendition that the song came to be identified with. Sung in Yaman Kalyan, the raga of romance, the recording was used as-is in Mira Nair's 2001 film, Monsoon Wedding.Once Khanum’s Aaj Jaane Ki Zid Na Karo starts playing, you can't stop listening to it mid-way. When someone starts singing it in a group and tries to stop mid-way, others insist on completing it. It has the magical effect of bringing time to a standstill, moving everyone who hears it. What is it about Farida Khanum? Ali Sethi writes that “her wilful, uneven pacing of the lyrics creates the illusion of a chase, a constant fleeing of the words from the entrapments of beat,” thus creating “a bewitchingly layered song, one with a cajoling, comforting, almost foetal ebb and flow to it, but also with the plunges, scrapes and gasps of a ravenous consummation. It has bliss, strife, love, sex.”Yet it was neither the first nor the last rendition of Aaj Jaaney Ki Zid Na Karo. Here are five different renditions, to be seen as tributes to Khanum.First, here’s the original, sung by Habib Wali Muhammad for the 1974 Pakistani film Baadal Aur Bijli. It would stay forever with you had Farida Khanum not sung it later!A bold experiment by the US-based Sonny Mehta-led Riyaz Qawwali group renders the ghazal as a qawwali, with due apologies.AR Rahman pays his tribute to Farida Khanum by adding accordion, strings and piano to his voice.Here is Asha Bhosle singing it for a 2005 film, Love Supreme.This otherwise indifferent cover by Rohini Ravada is notable for the music by Shankar Tucker on keyboards, clarinet, and tabla.Listen to these songs as a single playlist on our YouTube channel