Maverick film-maker
Himmat Singh Gill

Echoes and Eloquences: The Life and Cinema of Gulzar
by Saibal Chatterjee. Rupa.
Pages 266. Rs 795.

Extremely polite, dignified, reserved and standoffish to a point of being termed shy by most, Sampooran Singh Kalra, better known as Gulzar the film-maker and lyricist, is a man of few words as many of us his colleagues at the Sahitya Akademi in New Delhi have discovered over the years. It was, therefore, with a sense of expectation and curiosity that I read Saibal Chatterjee’s biography of the man, to see whether justice had been done to a good-looking man who could well have been a leading actor in Bollywood himself. 

In this well-presented book, containing some rare photographs and hitherto unknown slices of life in the opportunist and messy world of film studios in Mumbai, Saibal paints an impressive portrait of a man who while steeped in the roots of yore is not at all hesitant in presenting the contemporary picture of the times that he lives in presently.

From Libaas to Maachis, which was a runaway seller, Gulzar has steered a steady course listening to all the advice that many have given him, but ultimately traversing the lone path that his conviction and inner counsel has dictated. Such a person is bound to have his run-ins with the establishment as it happened in the case of Aandhi, where the main character looked to many as a replica of Indira Gandhi out on a quest for power at any cost, or in the aborted Devdas when the producer Kailash Chopra walked out on him. But in all this jostling and rumble tumble, the not-so-easily-ruffled Sardarji has held his ground and bounced back a winner in many a long distance race that he has been obliged to take part in.

From his early apprenticeship with the legendry Bimal Roy who saw much promise in him, through the necessary funding that producer-friend N. C. Sippy provided in many of his ventures, and into the high and low of the capricious Bollywood tide with blockbusters like Mausam and disasters like Kitaab en route, Gulzar has treaded the path of exclusivity and refused to lower his own standards of propriety and class.

One must give credit to Chatterjee that in dealing with the early Gulzar-Raakhee break up, he has not been contrite and boorish. He sums it up in these words: “No relationship ever ends completely. No relationship ever dies…it transcends to a different meaning.” In fact, some years back, Gulzar had dedicated his anthology of short stories titled Raavi Paar to Raakhee, with the words, “the longest short story of my life.” Readers would be interested to know that Raakhee on her part has built a house at Aptegaon, near Panvel, where she met Gulzar for the first time.

It is clear that Saibal has traced the Gulzar phenomenon and his life and times through the medium of the films that he has made and the various incidents that made up for his journey in filmdom, and this is all for the good because that is where the average reader’s interest lies. 

This is the story of a sensitive and erudite poet, delicately told by a well-informed and seasoned biographer who seems to have done his homework well. 

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