"I wanted to live literature"

MERI aawaz hi pehchaan hai, gar yaad rahe.Naam gum jaayega... so naturally, you ask why the name Gulzar? "Sab jama taqseem kar ke ek naam hi bacha hai aur wo hi asli hai," explains the director, who brought to screen the softest and the most intense of emotions enwombed in words as simple as they come. Parichay, Kinara, Koshish, Ijaazat, Maachis, Namkeen, Angoor... words that keep falling in and out of our mouths as we go about life. And that is the catch. Simple, and so they are yours, mine and ours. Be it the Dil khali khali bartan hai aur raat hai ik andha kuan when the metaphors spring up as fluently as the expression, or jhooti mooti, moi ne rasoi mein pukara tha, lohe ke chimte se lipte ko mara tha that brings along a whiff of the cold winter nights somewhere in a Punjab village. Take the vivid — chota sa saya tha ankhon mein aaya tha, humne do boondon se ghar bhar liva tha. Or the giving away in mujhe agar baahon mein bhar lo, shayad tumkjo sukoon mile. It all comes flowing into the heart.

Gulzar’s lyrics, his movies are for all those who feel and, more importantly, recognise that they do have subtle emotions tucked away somewhere. Recognition has come his way in the form of innumerable awards starting from 1971 to his latest in 1997. But they say that the rising is in the roots and not in the sky. Gulzar touches a deeper chord when he says that he has just begin to feel confident. Well good things after all don’t map themselves, they have a knack of showing up suddenly like the lost atthani (50 paisa) -- Kabhi dhool mein padi payi, kabhi jeb se nikal aayi, atthani si zindagi, yeh zindagi.

Chitleen K. Sethi met Gulzar for an exclusive interview recently. Excerpts:

You were born in Pakistan and brought up in Delhi. How did you end up in Bombay?

I was born at Dina, Jhelum district (now in Pakistan), in a very conservative business family. One half of our family was settled in old Delhi. I was 11 years old when India was partitioned and we came to Delhi. A few years later, a second division took place in the family and it brought my elder brother to Bombay for business. I had finished my college by then and was struggling to establish myself as a writer.

Do you recall the Partition days?

I remember almost everything. It left deep impressions on my mind. It was too young an age to see all those riots. For almost 20 to 25 years (till the age of 30-35), I had nightmares. I wrote about it too in an effort to get it out of my system but then my writings were rather immature. Its just recently that I have been able to think about it objectively and write maturely about it. My book of short stories -- Ravi Paar-- has a lot of impressions of those times. There are some nazms of those days in Pukhraj.

Why did you choose writing as your form of expression?

The realisation that I wanted to be a writer is not based on any incident. In fact, it never is. People do look back and try and find a certain tragedy or situation as a start of their creativity but I feel it is not true. Creativity is a process. It grows over the years. For a long time I was extremely interested in Indian classical music and it is still my favourite pastime. At that age I could not understand it but I listened to it a lot. I liked works of art and painters at work. Those could been my forms of expression. In school we had a maulvi, Mujibur Rehman, who taught us Urdu. He used to organise a poetry competition called baitbaazi, the same as antaakshri. The class used to be divided into two and in my opposing team used to be Akbar Rashid, a friend who used to be good at memorising Urdu poems. As an answer to a single shevar, he used to recite a whole nazm. Envious of him, I would always try to outdo him. For that I started cheating by making my own poems and reciting those. Slowly, I started understanding poetry and then writing prose and poetry became my temperament. Whenever I visited kavi darbars, I saw how the poets got wah wahs and jaikaras and realised that it was a respected form of art. Moreover, the poet was a unique individual, not like everyone. So you see, it’s always many factors that mould one. In every fine art the artist keeps growing all the time. The learning never ends.

Since yours is a business family, how did it respond to your decision to become a writer?

No one in my family had opted for the arts and, as was expected, my father did not approve of my interests. Eh marasi kithon jam peya hai sade ghar?, he would say. He would quote the example of Darshan Singh Awara, also a distant relative of ours, of how he actually called himself awara because of his profession. But then Darshan Singh was a big poet and I found his example really inspiring. My father had struggled a lot with his business all his life and so he could not appreciate my ambitions. He could never have expected that I would be one day earning a decent living through writing.

How were you attracted to films?

Well, I never wanted to be associated with films. My first love was writing and it still is. I wanted to live literature and be a part of it. It was almost unwillingly that I joined the film world as a lyricist. While I was working in Bombay, I got associated with the Progressive Writers Association (PWA), some writers were also members of the Indian People’s Theatre Association (IPTA). Here, I met Salil Choudhry, Basu Bhattacharya, Shailendra, Balraj Sahni, R.S. Bedi and other intellectuals. I learnt a lot from them. I was coaxed into writing a song for Bimal Roy’s film Bandini. Since it was considered a literary unit,I was told that I would find it very satisfying. I wrote a song for it — Mora gora ang layile, mohe shyam rang daide ... Bimal da asked me to join him and leave the semi administrative and colour matching work that I did at the garage. I did not want to be a lyricist so I refused. Being a master, he broke the mental barriers I had against writing film songs and joined him in 1961. I wrote for his film Kabuliwala, Prempatra, etc but started getting more interested in the director’s work. I soon realised the film is a director’s medium. I worked on some of Bimalda’s scripts also but when he died in 1965, we were left jobless. Hemant Kumar provided each of us with a job. I wrote the scripts for some of his films and thought that I will get my first break as a director with him since he was also producing films. One such film was Khamoshi. But his films did not do very well at the box office, and then he stopped producing them. Next, I came into contact with Hrishikesh Mukerjee. He called me for the script of Aashirwaad and this continued with the other films like Anand, Bavarchi, Guddi, Namak Haram and many others. Hrishida became my masterji and Bimal da the principal. By this time, I had also got a book of short stories published and it had the story of Guddi. Then with Hrishida’s blessings, I directed my first film Mere Apne in 1971. Since then the process has continued.

How did this transition from writer to director feel?

I found direction much more satisfying and after my aptitude, though the importance of a script or story in a film cannot be underplayed. The film is a director’s medium no doubt but the screenplay remains its soul. The actors, actresses, the music, in fact, the whole film is as good or as bad as the script is.

How do you assess yourself in your various roles — that of a director, lyricist and writer?

Well, I have been through some really rough days but when one looks back at them now they seem like an adventure. I took my own decisions and though I understood that they were not approved by my family, I had to struggle not just with my own problems of achieving what I wanted to, but also with my family’s disappointment in me. I am glad I made my own way in life and have been able to achieve my goals. As far as writing goes, it’s recently that I have started feeling confident that I can write and (if required) I will be able to express whatever I want to.

What difference do you find between lyrics and songs? Most of your songs sound like poems.

A poem is a very different form of expression and can be about anything, that is why there is a lot of freedom involved in writing a poemsince its something you feel like saying. On the other hand, songs call for lyrics in which you have to say something according to a situation. The most important thing I keep in mind while writing film songs is to make them hummable. A poem need not be hummable.

Who are your favourite poets?

Ghalib is the bade miyan of Urdu poetry. Though it is difficult to understand him, his works draw you to them, inviting you to read and understand them. Others I like are Rashid and Faiz. Tagore fascinates me and I learnt Bengali just to read Tagore in original. It even led me to marrying a Bengali girl! Other Bengali poets I enjoy reading are Subhas Mukherjee and Jivanand Das. I like Auden too. Nazim Ikmut is a Turkish poet whom I like. I read a lot. When I am not reading, I listen to classical music.

How do you end up choosing metaphors while writing?

Words emerge from characters themselves just like the characters are emerging from the script. One has to pick up images and their expressions from one’s surroundings, not from books. I had no idea that the song Atthani si zindagi would go so well with the audience. I was in fact rather anxious that it will be laughed at. But I’m glad that people have liked it. Don’t you think that life actually comes to you like this?

In a large part of your work, you have dealt with feminine emotions. How can you capture these so well?

Well, I am a very good mother to my daughter and I have brought her up on my own. Let me quote a situation from a film. In the film Ek Pal, Shabana Azmi is shown carrying an illegitimate child. There is a song composed by Bhupen Hazarika and sung by Bhupendra. It goes like this Jaane kya hai, dar lagta hai, jee darta hai, mere haad maas ka yeh tukda hai, sab kuch aadha aadha baanta hua lagta hai. I must have been pregnant when I wrote this song. You have to have the basic sensitivity in order to make anyone’s experience your own. In fact, if one just writes about the situations one has gone through, one limits oneself. You also have to react to other people’s experiences. That is, in fact, the social responsibility of any writer.

Have you ever tried to bring about reform through your films?

Films are not reformers and I have never intended to bring about any change. Film making, for me, is a way of sharing my thoughts. My films symbolise the way I look at life. My intention is to just get across my point of view or vision and share an understanding of it with my audience.

How much does the box office success of your films matter to you?

Monetarily it does not matter much but otherwise it does. If a film does not click with the people then something has gone wrong somewhere while making the film. The audience, in India, is not just intelligent but also very truthful. It is so innocent that one has to do just slightly better than the others and they appreciate it to the hilt. Though I have not created any great cinema, the satisfaction and appreciation I have always got is tremendous. When a film flops, one feels that there has been a communication problem somewhere. You try to rectify that the next time.