The musafir who doesn’t rest on his laurels

Mumbai: He is at his writing desk at 9.30 am sharp, rain or sunshine, all set to weave a tapestry of images and ideas, fact and fiction, syllables and silence, even as a reclining Buddha, frozen in marble and installed in the courtyard, smiles softly.
“A writer’s dilemma is to hit upon the right word suffused with cadence, tone and ‘zaayka’ (taste). I face it whenever I sit down to write,” he said, adding, “It’s a never ending quest.”
With two books ready to roll out of the printing press and ‘Dhoop Aane Do’, his latest collection of essays, memoirs and poems, in English, released on Saturday, for Gulzar the voyage of words continues unperturbed at 90.
The quiet birthday bash, held at an undisclosed venue last Sunday, was characteristic of the man. A recluse never knows the destination, a weather-beaten traveller doesn’t reveal it.
From a budding poet—and a car spray painter to boot in a central Mumbai garage—to the tallest figure of the world of letters and cinema, Gulzar has come a long way.
“Poetry is in his bones,” said Marathi writer and Gulzar’s long-time friend Arun Shevte. Gulzar has for over three decades been contributing to ‘Riturang’, Shevte’s literary annual. “Gulzar-ji peels off a word’s outer layers and touches the core with consummate artistry. For him every poem, regardless of language and nationality, is an elevating moment,” said Shevte.
Memories are the leitmotif of many of Gulzar’s poems. “I cherish small, insignificant ‘lamhe’ (moments),” he says in a preface to ‘Pluto’, a collection of poems. Fusing continents and centuries, landscapes and languages, Bulle Shah and Mirza Ghalib, Tagore and Premchand, Shakespeare and Mira comes easy to him.
Unruffled by praise and a slew of honours, including the prestigious Dadasaheb Phalke award, the Jnanpith award, Padma Bhushan and the Academy Award for ‘Jai Ho’ in ‘Slumdog Millionaire’, the hermit has risen above his literary innings, and has come to be seen, amidst socio-political turmoil, as a voice of reason and apostle of India’s syncretic culture.
The garage job gave Gulzar ample time to read, write, attend mushairas and IPTA (a vibrant, Left-helmed cultural movement) events and bond with the sea-swept Mumbai; he was not hugely enamoured of the film world then, nor is he today.
“There is a huge world out there chock-a-block with people, and their angst and happiness. This world of flesh and blood fascinates me,” he said in a recent interview with HT.
How Basu Bhattacharya and Debu Sen, proteges of the great Bimal Roy and clients of the Vichare garage, took a shine to the 20-something poet and persuaded him to join Bimal Roy Productions as assistant director; how the legendary poet Shailendra’s verbal tiff with S D Burman over a song situation in ‘Bandini’ (1960) resulted in Gulzar penning ‘Mora Gore anga layee le’ are endearing stories from the filmland lore.
The reluctant lyricist has fared well, though, considering a tally of 800 songs reaped over the decades, many of which have seeped into India’s collective consciousness. “Songs as dissimilar as ‘Dil toh bachcha hai ji’ (‘Ishqiya’ – 2010) and ‘Mera kuchch samaan tumhare paas pada hai’ (‘Ijaazat’ – 1987) have become part of Mumbai’s lingo. Similarly, ‘Chaddi pahan key phool khila hai’ and ‘Lakadi ki kaathi, kaathi pe ghoda’ swept the country’s tiny toddlers off their feet in the 1980s, including yours truly,” said noted music expert and broadcaster Rajil Sayani.
Pointing out that back in the 1970s Gulzar altered the landscape of popular entertainment by freeing film songs from cliches and mushy imagery, lawyer-turned-cultural chronicler Zubair Azmi of the Urdu Marqaz said, “Keeping away from cheap ‘tukbandi’ such as pyaar, bahar, qaraar, beqaraar and somwar, Gulzar minted fresh words and images to elevate an otherwise mundane experience to an aesthetic level.”
As years rolled by Gulzar blended seamlessly with the changing times, teaming up with the new crop of music directors such as A R Rahman, Vishal Bharadwaj, Shantanu Moitra and Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy, among others, and experimenting with cutting edge technology and funkey ‘taal’ patterns to rustle up a clutch urban folk ditties: for instance, ‘Chal Chchaieyaan’ and ‘Beedi jalai le’. The raw, sinewy phrases and images which he borrowed from the UP heartland — Maithili, Brij, Bhojpuri, Bagheli and Bundelkhandi—left the millennials asking for more.
“While retaining link with the classical Urdu poetry Gulzar skilfully mutated the once courtly language to tackle modern themes such as urbanisation (‘Ek akeyla is shahar mein’: ‘Gharaonda’), anxiety (‘Tujh se naraaz nahin zindagi hairaan hoon main’: ‘Masoom’), sanguine hope (‘Aye zindagi gale laga le’: ‘Sadma’) and unbridled passion (‘Zubaan pe laga hai, namak ishq kaa’: ‘Omkara’),” said Azmi.
Many cineastes, especially women, tip their hats to the film maker for portraying strong-willed women on the silver screen. “The female protagonists in ‘Aandhi’, ‘Mausam’, ‘Khushboo, ‘Ijaazat’, ‘Ghar’, ‘Lekin’ and ‘Machis’ gather courage from the depths of their inner self. They never give up, nor do they rave and rant,” said Mallika Dhamnaskar, an ardent Gulzar admirer.
Gulzar wears many hats. But the poet in him is ever alert, creating a right kind of ambience for his myriad ventures, whether he makes films or television serials, writes script and dialogues, pens songs or does sketches and calligraphy. The slow, lingering camera movement lends poetic sensibility to the scene and breathes life into celluloid characters.
While Gulzar’s credentials as poet-lyricist remain uncontested, Shevte is of the view that Gulzar’s directorial skills need to be re-assessed in the wake of the rise of a new class of film viewers. “His shot composition is brilliant. Never the one to tower over his characters, he guides them through life’s highs and lows, always empathising with them, but never interfering. A good film maker has to be a good shepherd. Gulzarsaab is one.”
At 5.30 p.m., the master calls it a day, puts on his sneakers and steps out of Boskiyana, his Pali hill abode in Bandra, for a quiet stroll.
A ‘musafir’ never rests on his laurels.
Eom