Many Maestros in Gulzar: Award or Not, His Works Are an Ode to the Human Spirt

He's the only Jnanpith Awardee in the history of the awards with a parallel identity as an award-winning filmmaker.

He remains unfazed by awards, state, national and international that he is picked at random as if like pebbles off a crowded beach. That is Gulzar for you, one of the three Jnanpith Awardees this year.

(Photo: Vibhushita Singh/ The Quint)

Gulzar will touch 90 this August. And he has just been bestowed the Jnanpith Award – the topmost honour for one’s contribution to literature. This adds perhaps the last feather on his already much-feathered cap with all the awards one could win during a lifetime.

The Jnanpith Award is a literary award presented by the Bharatiya Jnanpith organisation to Indian writers every year. The 11th Osian's Cinefan Festival of Asian and Arab Cinema also bestowed its prestigious 2009 Lifetime Achievement Award for Cinematic Contribution to Gulzar.

Gulzar’s Creative Calibre Gets Top Recognition

This award was instituted in 1961 and is given only to Indian writers who write in Indian languages and English.

With this highly honoured award, Gulzar finds himself in the august company of literary greats of all time. Among them are Tarasankar Bandopadhyay, Firaq Gorakhpuri, Bishnu Dey, Amrita Pritam, Mahadevi Verma, and many others.

The most striking part about Gulzar joining this list is that he is the only Jnanpith Awardee in the history of the award who, besides being an integral part of the Indian literary world, has a parallel identity as an award-winning filmmaker, a prized script and story writer for films, a lyricist of great renown, and one who has won the Oscar for his creation of a song Jai Ho in Slumdog Millionnaire – though one needs to underscore that he has given us much better lyrics than the one that fetched him the Oscar.

He also won the Dadasaheb Phalke Award in 2014 – the highest in the world of cinema in 2014. A multi-talented artist, he also plays the sitar very well and learnt Bengali because he wanted to read Tagore in the original.

Gulzar’s Amiable Personality Adds to His Charm

The lines on his handsome face are a bit pronounced. His famous one-day stubble is generously sprinkled with his favourite colour white.

When asked how he manages to keep his kurta-pyjama so spotlessly white, he smiles and says that everything is possible if you have the will. Yet, one can easily label this quiet and gentle man a 'revolutionary'.

How?

Rina Singh who has translated his selected poems into English (1994), responds as follows: The Indian film world which he has chosen as his milieu is such that it calls for a very tough hide indeed. His poetry reveals that he has not only failed to develop such a hide but has remained more thin-skinned than most people.

Born Sampooran Singh to a Sikh family in Dina (now in Pakistan) in 1934, he changed his name to Gulzar somewhere along the way. But he skirts attempts to ferret out the name he was christened with.

"I want to free myself from any kind of religious or communal association. That is the only way to survive in this country where brainlessness is symbolised by caste and communal identity,” he says, flashing his gentle, magical smile.

Literature, Films, and Serendipity

He gives credit for his love for Urdu and poetry to his Urdu teacher in Delhi's United Christian School where Urdu was the medium of instruction till Independence. Much of his poetry is a nostalgic trip to his childhood where he talks about a tree on his way to school, or, of an empty can rolling on the streets. He wanted to take up literature but was not allowed to. 

His eldest brother asked him to do his CA. "I did not take the exam. I came home with laddus on the day of the results telling them I had passed. But I also told them to free me from the responsibility of further studies. They asked me to join the Navy, I hated the uniform. So, began to work in a motor servicing garage in Mumbai and met a lot of poet friends in films through the Progressive Writers' Association by becoming a member."

"The thirst for poetry remained and was triggered through the Indian People's Theatre Association (IPTA) and friendships with Basu Bhattacharya, Salil Choudhury, Debu Sen, Shailendra and Sukhbir, a prominent Punjabi-Hindi poet," Gulzar adds.

The biggest surprise about the Gulzar story is that he never wanted to step into films. It happened almost by accident brought about through nemesis that rewrote the story of his life.

"I wanted to teach in school so that it would give me the time to read and write – the two things I loved to do. One day, Debu Sen, a friend who was assisting Bimal Roy in Bandini, took me to Bimal da who in turn, introduced me to SD Burman. The reason was that SD had a tiff with the film’s lyricist, Shailendra, who walked out of the project, leaving some tunes unwritten. One of these had to be vaishnava in spirit."

"SD had reservations about me because my foundation lay in Urdu poetry. But I rose to the challenge and my first song was born, mora gora anga lai le, mohe shyam anga dai de, that turned out to be a hit. By the time the song was done, SD and Shailendra had made up and I was left out. Bimal da felt sad for me and asked me to assist him in Kabuliwallah. My life took a new turn.”

“I express myself through poetry, literature, and films. Film expresses itself through photography, architecture, acting, and music, other than my own medium of expression. This helps me extend my contact with other forms of art and thus enrich my knowledge, my persona, and my contacts with people. I find cinema the most fulfilling of all arts in terms of creative effort,” he elaborates.  

Love Affair With Tagore

Tagore had always been a hot favourite with Gulzar, ever since he read a short story called Gardener in translation. "And since then, one single-minded aim I had was to read Tagore in the original,” explains Gulzar.

“My love for everything Bengali makes itself strongly felt in every sphere of my life. I married Raakhee, a Bengali girl perhaps so that I would be able to pick up the subtle nuances of the spoken language. I named my daughter Meghna, after a river in Bengal, now in Bangladesh, and I have read all my favourite Bengali writers and poets in the original.”

Gulzar's poetry has been published in several compilations such as Chand Pukhraaj Ka, Raat Pashminey Ki, and Pandrah Paanch Pachattar (15-05-75). His short stories are published in Raavi-Paar and Dhuan. He has also created a new kind of stanza in Urdu poetry named Triveni.

"A poet is a conch-shell that gives voice to the emotions. A lyricist sings of dreams. A visionary is a painter who plays with rainbows. A thinker ponders upon human relationships like a monk who holds counsel with the trees of the forest. A rare blend of all these is Gulzar. Noteworthy about his creativity is his extremely good taste – both in his written words as a lyricist, a poet, a dialogue writer of outstanding merit, and in the visuals he conjures up as a filmmaker of growing eminence,” writes Gulzar's close friend and confidante Bhooshan Banmali, in the inside jacket of Silences, a collection of his poems translated to English.

It is an apt summing up of the humane spirit that underlies all creations of Gulzar – poet, writer, lyricist and filmmaker.

He remains unfazed by awards – state, national and international that he is picked at random as if like pebbles off a crowded beach. That is Gulzar for you, one of the three Jnanpith Awardees this year.

(Shoma A Chatterji is an Indian film scholar, author and freelance journalist. This is an opinion article and the views expressed above are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for them.)