To write about a poet with the sensitivity and lyricism of Gulzar, one needs at least some level of penmanship. Lacking that, it is best left to the poet to describe himself. In this profile of the poet, we have done just that—liberally used Gulzar’s immortal lines to decipher the man behind the poet.

I have a copyright on moon, says Gulzar saab...

...in mock seriousness when you prod him over the recurrent image of the moon in his poetry. “I have used the moon so much that I have a copyright over it.” The leitmotif is so predominant in his work that you can half believe him. Yet for him the moon has many faces. “Maybe, a couple of times, the image could be the same but otherwise, every time, it comes out differently. I meet the moon in different images. There is no repetition of the images of the moon because it comes to me differently every time.”

This is what makes Gulzar, one of the few Indian poets whose appeal is two-fold, unique.

Taking the simile of the moon further, for him: “It is a 50 paisa coin and a bundle of clothes as well. It is a maathe ka teeka, it is the handle of a sword—it is many things, many times.”

I interject at the point a little dryly: your moon has gone playing into the galaxy as well. He retorts with a laugh: Yes. It chews paan too. And in the ghazal:

Moonh par ghaaza mal gaya hai

Dhund hai chaaron taraf

Powder laga kar aaya hai

Jaise photo khichane aaya hai

And in another place:

Jhenpa jhenpa aa raha hai chaand

Jaane kisse mil kar aa raha hai chaand

I play with the image of the moon. I play with it,” he declares.

Apart from the imagery of the moon, of course, there is that of the eyes, which is again, very distinct. Then there is the play on water. So, what is that these images hold for you when you come back to them again and again, I ask him? Is there any aesthetic dimension to them?

“It is my spontaneity and my ease which enable me to try and catch and say the things that I feel strongly. If I say something different, I say it not because it is right or wrong but just that it is different and it is more to do with my habit,” says the wordsmith.

It is this spontaneity of the poet-writer that makes him popular in the Hindi and Urdu literary world. He is an out and out a people’s poet too. Gulzar successfully travels between the literary and the popular with his poetic craft. Who else can see the moon doing something as mundane as chewing paan? It is his ability to transcend the intellectual biases of the medium and reach out to the masses through his film writings that make him one of the most memorable lyrical writers of this century in both the popular and the literary anthologies.

Writing for more than five decades by now, Gulzar is known as a lyricist, a filmmaker, scriptscreenplay and dialogue writer, short story writer and translator. Through all the creative endeavours that he picks to showcase his creativity, it is poetry that shines through. Possessing a keen eye for detail, his sensitivity permeates through the use of his distinctive imagery and metaphors.

Born in August 1934 in Dina, which is now in Pakistan as Sampooran Singh Kalra, Gulzar was the fourth child of nine children of Sardar Makhan Singh. His mother died when he was only an infant. It was after the Partition, that he came to India. One group of the family settled in Roorkee, one moved to Udaipur, one had settled in Kanpur and one in Mumbai. Although Gulzar was barely 10-11 years old at the time of the Partition, the memory of the trauma left an indelible impression on his young mind which found a voice in the collection of short stories Raavi Paar and Other Stories, as he mentions it in the foreword. Gulzar mentions how the Partition left him bruised and scarred and goes on to add that he cannot help but write about that excruciating period. The pangs of Partition are also reflected in many of his poems including Bhameree, which delineates the family’s flight to save their lives at the turbulent time:

Hum sab bhaag rahe the

Refugee the

Maan ne jitney zevar the, sab pahan liye the

Baandh liye the...

Chhoti mujhse...chhay salon ki

Doodh pila ke, khoob khila ke, saath liya tha

Maine apnee ek “bhameere” aur ek “lattu”

Pajame mein uddas liya tha

Raat ki raat hum gaon chodkar bhaag rahe the

Refugee the...

Communal tension in general occupied Gulzar to a great extent and a large body of his poems gave voice to his angst, so much so that he goes on to question the existence of God. There are six poems, titled Fasaadat 1 – 6 in the book Raat Pashmine Ki where the existence of God has been questioned. The poem, Fasaadat 3, ends with the couplet Aazmaish ki thi kal raat khudaon ke liye/Kal mere shaher mein ghar unke jalaye sab ne!!

The sensitivity displayed by Gulzar in his writings and the treatment of his films is the hallmark of his character. He tried to give me a date for the interview on a weekend, so that my daughter doesn’t miss school. His staff is with him for decades now. I spoke to some people who are associated with him, and everyone talks of his down-to-earth attitude. It is this remarkably sensitive and psychological understanding of people and their motivations and needs that are reflected throughout his life and work.

From Pakistan the family initially came to Delhi and lived in Basti Punjabia in Sabzi Mandi, where the young boy tried to complete his studies. After his matriculation from Delhi’s United Christian School, Gulzar joined St. Stephens College but was pulled out in the middle of the first term and sent to Mumbai, to his brother. The poet claims with his characteristic wry humour that he was already “establishing the reputation of being the black sheep of the family because of his love for poetry” and remembers how his father would worry about him that he was becoming a “miraasi”.

His love for lyrics, poetry and literature goes back to his young days when he would participate in antakshari, learn shairi, listen to Hindustani music and attend concerts.

Gulzar’s perfection in Urdu comes from the love for the Urdu poetry which began in the madarassa that he attended while he was in Pakistan. It kept growing even after he came to Delhi. The poet fondly remembers Maulvi Mujib-ur Rehman who taught him Urdu in Delhi, but after Maulvi Rehman left for Pakistan, Gulzar only learnt Hindi in school. This however did not stop his love affair with the poetic language that he kept nurturing.

The makings of the Urdu poet in Gulzar began in Delhi when he would indulge in bait baazi and recite Urdu couplets that he learnt by heart. His opponent in bait baazi, Akbar Rashid, was better at memorising poetry. Gulzar, not wanting to lose, would add a line or a word to the original, marking the beginnings of the legend that he would become.

This extempore trait he carried to his writings for films. It helped him successfully bring in the classical into the popular world, keeping earlier poetry alive in today’s language. He would pick up famous couplets of the masters of classical Urdu poetry, add his own words to them, thus turning them into beautiful songs; providing them with a contemporary feeling and connecting with the masses instantly. Be it Mausam’s Dil dhoodta hai phir wohi fursat ke raat din/Baithen rahein tassawur-e-jana kiye hue, which is actually a Ghalib couplet, built into a song—Jadon ki naram dhoop aur aangan mein let kar/Aankhon pe kheech kar tere aanchal ke sai ko/Aondhe pade rahein/Kabhi karvat liye hue…/—or be it a Jigar Moradabdi couplet—Yeh Ishq nahin aasaan bas itna samajh leejiye/Ek aag ka dariya hai aur doob ke jana hai—that he further moulds for the requirement and the song for the film Kaminey (2009)—Ye ishq nahin aasaan/Ajee AIDS ka khatra hai/Patwaar pahen jaana/Yeh aag ka dariya hai/Ke nayya dobe na/Yeh bhawra kaate na.

In Mumbai, Gulzar initially joined Khalsa College which he left after a year to study in National College, as the former did not have a faculty in Urdu and Persian literature. However, he abandoned his education in the second year, which he not only regrets till date, but also mentions in conversations regularly when discussing his past.

Throughout his years of struggle as a garage mechanic in Worli, Mumbai, he kept his passion for poetry alive, regularly penning lines. His film career began with assisting the legendary Bimal Roy on the iconic film Kabuliwala, (1961) for which he also wrote the song Ganga aaye kahan se.

“But it was my song Mora gora ang lae le/ mohe shyam rang dae de in Bandini (1962), based on Vaishnawite poetry which was my entry-pass to Hindustani cinema,” says Gulzar of his tryst with Hindi cinema. With these two films, Gulzar made a distinct mark for himself in Indian cinema, the rest as they say is history.

His association with the Progressive Writers’ Association (PWA) and Indian People’s Theatre Association (IPTA) helped widen his perspective as it provided him a platform for discussion and exchange of ideas with leading intellectuals, authors and poets of the time. The varied influences he was thus exposed to, Gulzar internalised, and they stayed with him all his life.

The poet believes in keeping abreast with the literature being produced round the world, even reading contemporary translations. “One needs to analyse the poetry of India to actually decipher all that is happening,” is Gulzar’s profound observation. Truly, poetry has always been the medium of expression for all eras, from the earliest oral history to the political poetic expressions of today.

The vast repertoire of literature that absorbs the author-poet-filmmaker is astounding. Apart from the literature of Bengal, Gulzar is often left wondering at the experiments in Malayalam poetry. “In Tamil, to which the Indian Government has recently given the status of classical language, there was poetry in the pre-Christian era, often referred to as the Sangam era,” he says. Then he goes on to discuss the literature of Punjab, the place of his birth, where Sufism came for the first time. “It came from West Asia and spread to other parts of the country.” He talks at length of the movement of Sufism and the poetry of Farid, Sultan Bahoo and Bulle Shah.

Gulzar believes in changing with the changing times, largely in terms of languages. “I am glad to be working for the directors and composers of today and am still learning to write according to today’s world and era,” says the writer. The humility of the man who the literary world looks up to as an inspiration is touching.

The writer-poet emphasises on the fact that his choice of words is “largely related to the sound of the words…words that the generation of today can relate better to”. He may be an intellectual but he is clearly writing for the people. For instance, “Jupiter and Mars have Hindi-Urdu equivalents, but the generation of today does not connect with it,” says Gulzar. Thus, he uses a mélange of different languages as per the mood of the poem as a characteristic. What is striking is that very often, the titles of his poems are in English. For example, some poems from his collection Pukhraaj are titled as Landscape, Painting, Model and even Good Morning, that would easily establish a connect with the readers.

Gulzar’s use of language leads to yet another aspect of his writing, his use of imagery, which is actually his signature style. His unique images with their extreme sensibility and sensitivity enhance the daily mundane existence to a level of the fine aesthetics which in their own turn challenge the everyday realities. How does he conceive these myriad images and their varied realities?

“You see a sun, a sunset, and immediately, a thought comes to you that it is a ball of fire that has exploded,” he begins his explanation, an attempt to introduce me to his poetic worldview. “Obviously, all that you have read comes to you in four–five similes but how it comes to your mind, and how you respond to it could be something different. Are they coming only from books, feeding your memory or are you feeling something beyond that? If you are feeling something beyond, there would be a new added image as well.” I nod my head and he continues.

“It often happens, while writing, your memories come flooding, like a computer, it feeds into it. You just have to keep it aside and wait to see how you feel about it. If you can pinpoint, then you are keeping to the spontaneity. So, what have you felt? I try to express what I have actually felt, whether it is a part of the custom or not....ummm, for example when you travel in a plane, you must have seen it... a milky white lamb running after me in great speed and it hits against the rear wing. It gets hurt, turns red. I get up to see. Blood spreads over the entire horizon. What you have seen, turning red and spreading the crimson colour on the horizon is actually a cloud when you see it from a plane. This is the image that comes to you. If you can’t catch it, you have lost it.”

I am entirely lost…but am mesmerized by the man and the power of the images that his words evoke.

Gulzar continues uninterrupted by my thoughts. “So, it is up to your own sensitivities and sensibilities, how to catch it and from where you catch it. I have just felt the day going by, there is a little sunshine coming from under the door. You can feel that the sunshine is turning red. It seems as if, while passing by, it has left a chit behind, saying:

Kal aayon ki nahin, pata nahin, lekin ek khat chode jaa raha hoon, tumne aaj ka din bhi kaat liya.

It depends on how you react to it. If you don’t react to it, it is gone.”

He obviously has captured it well for me and the readers. I bid adaab to him and take my leave with the sun and the clouds casting strange images around me and I under the spell of the moon:

Saba is the author of the book, I Swallowed the Moon: The Poetry of Gulzar. The profile uses excerpts of interview from the book.)