‘Language is not static’

Gulzar needs no introduction. The prolific writer has churned out scripts, lyrics and poetry for decades and he shows no signs of stopping even now. But do such veterans also face the writer’s block? He says, “A block means nothing is happening. That is part of creativity. There comes a stage when you are writing continuously, and if you are objective enough to look at your work, when you start feeling like you are repeating yourself, this block stems from there. That’s when you feel a little choked with yourself. It is that choking that keeps churning inside you and breaks you away from what you’ve been doing. Even a potter bahut din tak haandi banate banate bore ho jaayega, phir bethke surahi banane lagta hai (Even a potter will get bored after making a certain kind of pot over and over, and he’ll go make a different kind of pot). It is human nature. It gives you a break to look at yourself objectively, and allows you to do something different.” Talking about keeping himself updated with changing times and evolving languages yet preserving his own style of writing, Gulzar says, “Language is not static. It keeps changing with time. The Urdu, Punjabi or even English that we speak is not the same [language] that was spoken before 1947. Today, it is American. Language changes with changes in your lifestyle. However, it may take another 100 years for any language to become the mother tongue, if you look at the process of evolution. English may become one of the mother tongues here as well. But it takes a long time for that [to happen]. Our mother languages are hundreds of years old — like Urdu, which was born here.”

Gulzar feels that English may become the mother tongue for Indians