Meet Gulzar, the legend

Sequestered in his one-storey bungalow - named Boskiyana after the monicker of his daughter Meghna - in the tony neighbourhood of Pali Hill, Bandra, he's kept company by tall stacks of books, chunky files and reams of paper.
At the age of 84, the widely-fêted Gulzar, born Sampooran Singh Kalra in Dina, a township of Punjab (now in Pakistan), is one of a kind in the hurly-burly pace of Bollywood. Thoroughly time-managed, his everyday regimen involves spending hours at his neatly-appointed home-cum-workplace, taking a short break for lunch, and then winding up as late evening sets in.
Quality time is, then, spent with his nine-year-old grandson Samay. Early to sleep and early to rise has always been Gulzar's credo. Being an avid tennis player at a nearby Gymkhana for years explains his spry stride and an always somewhat bemused demeanour.
Unusually, Gulzar has worn his fame lightly, which includes the Padma Bhushan title, the Dadasaheb Phalke Award, 21 Filmfare trophies and, of course, the Oscar statuette earned for the song Jai Ho for Slumdog Millionaire (2008), composed by A.R. Rahman. Indeed, have such uber prestigious honours altered the multi-tasking lyricist-poet-script and dialogue writer-and-author in any which way? I don't think so. During the decades I've been privileged to know him, he has radiated the zeal of a newcomer besides retaining the innocence of the child within him.
Currently, he is curating an ambitious book project titled A Poem A Day, a collection of verses written by a gamut of poets from different parts of India, right from 1947 to here and now. Last year, his volume of poetry - Suspected Poems, translated from Urdu to English, commented sharply on the political reality facing the nation. A pungent verse, pleading for communal harmony, reads, "For no particular reason/ He had the blue cow tattooed on his right shoulder/ He would have been killed in the riots yesterday/ But they were good people/ Seeing a cow, they let him go!"
In the course of an interview over coffee - I'm allocated an hour - the soft-spoken octogenarian admits that books aren't sufficient to keep the kitchen fires burning. "Poems and short stories don't get me my rozi roti (bread and butter)," he smiles. "But I'm fortunate enough to continue writing lyrics for films. Once there was Pancham (R.D. Burman) whom I would really enjoy collaborating with. Now, there are directors like Vishal Bharadwaj and Shaad Ali with whom there's a special rapport."
The tempo and volume of today's lyrics have changed dramatically, Gulzar adds, and it's essential to reflect the times. "There was some criticism about my lyric Bidi Jalaile for Vishal's Omkara (2006)," he states. "But honestly, I couldn't have possibly written something on the lines of Dil-e-naadan Tujhe Hua Kya Hai for the situation in the script." He's spot-on there. Over the years, he has penned youthful lyrics like Kajra Re for Shaad Ali's Bunty Aur Babli (2005). And he can switch tracks too, as he did for the anthemic, award-winning song Ae Watan for his daughter Meghna Gulzar's Raazi (2018).
"I don't live in an almirah. I keep in touch with people from all sections of society today," he narrates. "In the age of cellphones, I can't be tied to a landline, can I? Neither can I imagine myself writing songs for heroes wearing sherwanis. No one's making films like those of the 1950s and '60s anymore. We do get nostalgic about them but cannot live in the past. Like cinema, lyrics have to be in sync with the milieu of the times."
More than often, it would seem his lyrics are drawn from personal experience since he has evidenced the crests and troughs of life. Initially, in Mumbai as a young man who idolised the oeuvre of the Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore, he had toiled away as a painter at a car garage. On being noticed by the stalwart filmmaker Bimal Roy at the meetings of the Progressive Writers' Association, he moved to work at the studios, writing his first song Mora Gora Rang Laye Le, filmed on Nutan in Bandini (1963). Script, story and dialogue collaborations with Hrishikesh Mukherjee followed before he became an independent director with Mere Apne (1971), featuring Meena Kumari as an aged woman who shines a light on opposing gangs of wayward youths.
Striking up an estimable oeuvre of 17 films as a director tackling various genres - from the political and the larkishly comedic to lavish romances and social dramas - I'd count Koshish (1972), Aandhi (1975), Kitaab (1977), Angoor (1982), Namkeen (1982), Ijaazat (1987) and Maachis (1996) among my strictly subjective favourites. It's a pity that the auteur's probe into the world of theatre, Libaas (1988), is still to find a theatrical release owing to production conundrums.
Needless to assert, the emotionally rich TV bio-series Mirza Ghalib (1988), showcasing Naseeruddin Shah in the title role, has withstood the test of time and has acquired a cult status.
So, why did Gulzar never direct a feature film again after Hu Tu Tu (1999), which had packed in trenchant political commentary? To that, his stoic answer is that the final print had been severely tampered with by the film's producer Dhirubhai Shah, and that he doesn't wish to go through such an experience ever again. "In any case, there are hundreds of books in the godown of my mind that are still waiting to be written. Hence, I've chosen to be creatively satisfied rather than yield myself to compromises."
For a while now, the quintessentially introverted writer has been a major crowd-puller, especially at literary festivals. Curious that, since he once suffered from chronic stage fright.
Point the anomaly out and he laughs, "I'm still frightfully nervous on stage. Perhaps there's a decent actor within me and I somehow get through the literary sessions. If you ask me, my desk is my comfort zone. That's where I will always belong."
wknd@khaleejtimes.com