For book lovers
is a living medium, as alive as the headlines of a newspaper. The problem is that in schools and colleges, we teach only classical poetry when the focus should be on contemporary writing. I promised to give them a poem a day that is relevant to the times we live in,” says Gulzar.
A decade after the prestigious Dadasaheb Phalke Award for his contribution to cinema, when Gulzar was named for the Jnanpith, it signalled recognition of his genteel yet resilient struggle for acceptance. “Sometimes, I felt that if I had not found success in cinema, nobody would have picked up my literary writing. But I kept at it and the prestigious award proves that I was wrong,” he says.
Purists might have taken time to give Gulzar his due, but his cinematic expression always possessed literary merit. “My work always had individuality. I don’t think anybody before me teased the moon with a phrase like ‘tohe rahu lage bairi’,” he says, referring to his first creation, ‘Mera gora ang laile’ for Bimal Roy’s Bandini (1963), where the protagonist, who is willingly getting sucked into darkness, strikes a conversation with the moon playing hideandseek with the clouds. She playfully curses it with a conjunction of Rahu — the shadow planet is supposed to bring illluck and cause eclipses.
“I had to feel like the character, but without the riyaaz of literature, this thought could not be expressed. Literature was my ground, literature was my soil where I ploughed my imagination and experiences. And the award feels like a farmer has found his kosha-e-gandum, the sheaf of wheat, or bajre da sitta, the pod of the pearl millet,” says Gulzar.
The lyricist who famously didn’t go to receive the Oscar statuette for 'Jai Ho', because “I didn’t have a black coat,” is keen to hold the Jnanpith’s bronze Saraswati.
Reflecting on his long journey, Gulzar says: “Like my moustache and beard, at a certain age, shayari also grows on everybody. People learn to swim, I drowned myself in literature.” He insists there was no catalyst as such. “I studied in a school where the medium of instruction was Urdu. Our teacher Mahmood ur Rahman used to organise bait baazi competitions, where students had to recite the couplets of noted poets. At times, I would cheat by changing the first letter to meet the challenge given by the opposite team, but the master would intervene. It was his way to make us go beyond the prescribed text. The chura (flakes) of that poetry stayed somewhere inside me,” he elaborates.
Gradually, Gulzar learnt to separate the good couplets from the ordinary ones, and then started introducing his own. “When the teacher asked whose creation it was, I would feign ignorance.” That passion for literature soon turned Gulzar into a bookworm. It meant he would read not just Tagore and Shakespeare but also Jibanananda Das, Nazim Hikmet and W.H Auden.
“The fact that I studied poetry in different languages and from varied cultures helped me come up with words to express myself with confidence. For instance, a line of T.S. Eliot’s The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock — the streets that follow like a tedious argument of insidious intent — stayed with me and when I was writing a nazm to introduce Mirza Ghalib’s abode in Old Delhi, it came out as, Ballimaran ke mohalle ki woh pechida dalilon ki si galiyan.
When he starts writing, hundreds of idioms that Gulzar has read on the subject pass through the mind, he says. “The challenge is to keep them
A collection of poems and songs for children
Chosen by Gulzar, it features the works of poets from across Asia
Gulzar translates Tagore in this book. says Vipul. The concert paved the way for Drunk on Love. “The audience asked for a book that shares his life story, writings and translations of his poetry,” he adds.
Dedicated website
With the similar intent of showcasing the life and mission of mystic poets, Vipul created a website called ‘Ishq Fakiri’. It is populated with his performances and songs by Kabir, Meera, Baba Bulle Shah, Gorak Nath, Shah Abdul Latif Bhitai and Sattar Das.
Each song has been presented with complete lyrics and translations in English.
“These are not just songs; they carry a deep message. And so, whenever I present concerts, I always explain the lyrics before singing and people find that really helpful. So, this website, this album is also a similar effort,” explains Vipul.
Vipul says Kabir’s layered poetry revealed itself to him over the years. He cites the example of his famous song ‘Mohe sun sun aave hasi, paani mein meen pyaasi’ which means
Gulzar.
(Below) With filmmaker-daughter Meghna. ‘I laugh when I hear that the fish is thirsty in water’.
“What he says is that even though we are surrounded by love and joy, all human beings experience this sense of incompleteness, which is what drives us to look for this or that. After I discovered the deeper meaning, the song came alive for me. The way I sang it also changed the way I connected with it,” says the singerauthor.
Some of Vipul’s favourite Kabir songs are ‘Moko kahan tu dhundhe re bande’ and
‘Chadariya jheeni re jheeni’, which describes the journey that a finelyknit cloth goes through. In this case, the cloth is an allegory for a human body that has been created with care by the almighty.
It’s interesting that Vipul’s concerts can be hosted at home as well as in an auditorium.
“That's part of the whole point, because Kabir was a man of the people. He was a weaver who lived in Varanasi — he had a wife and children, and he lived an everyday life. Kabir talks a lot about being grounded. And that's the spirit in which I like to share Kabir as well,” says Vipul.