I had the privilege of working on two books with Gulzar Saab, one a free-wheeling conversation about his life (In the Company of a Poet, 2012) and the other on his songs and his use of imagery and how to translate his lyrics into English (Jiya Jale, 2018). His poetic imagination is visual, and it is tricky to find equivalence in English.

Take “Dhanno ki aankhon mein hai raat ka surma aur chaand ka chumma”. The words are like the brush strokes of a painter – as though he were painting his beloved’s eyes on an easel against the background of the dark night and the moon.

At other times, his songs are conversational and sometimes even sound like a letter. “Mera kuchh samaan” is an example. He also takes pleasure in personifying the heart with playfulness and mischief – “Dil to bachcha hai”.

Some songs work like inner thoughts looking back on the past, in the attempt of capturing a fleeting moment – “Woh shyam kuch ajeeb thi”. His songs excel at painting different moods.

My personal favourite is “Humne dekhi hai un aankhon ki mehakti khushboo”. Eyes have been described from every angle in poetry and for centuries, but this is new. This is Gulzar.

Talking about this song, he told me that very few people picked up on the fact the lyrics describe the beloved’s eyes from a male point of view – while Hemant Kumar insisted Lata Mangeshkar sing this song. No one questioned the song’s point of view from a genre angle, but this same song was criticised because it was said that “eyes cannot exude fragrance”. In Gulzar’s world, if he sees it, he will make us see it and believe it too.

Working on both books was a pleasure. Our meetings took place in his home. The two-storey bungalow where he lives is well-known in Pali Hill, Bandra, and is called Boskyana, the nickname of his daughter, the film director Meghna Gulzar. I asked him what the name meant, and he explained that boski is a silk that originated in China, and because his daughter had silky skin when she was born, she is known by her close family as Bosky ever since. According to the Net, boski was discovered by a Chinese empress when a silk cocoon fell into her tea one afternoon.

You can set your watch by Gulzar. If he asks you to come at 11 am, you can rest assured you will not need to wait a minute beyond the given time before you enter his study. Heaving bookshelves cover the walls; further heaps of books are stacked on every visible inch of his desk. One can easily imagine this pile of words growing so tall that one day they would swallow up the view of the poet himself. Books in English, Hindi and Urdu with yellow post-it notes sticking out like branches of a tree – these reminders are not there for show but aides to refer later to a highlighted para or word. Many own books, Gulzar Saab reads them.

At 90, the discipline for writing has not wavered. This passion drives him to be at his desk, dressed in an impeccable white kurta-pyjama, every day, six days a week. Sometimes he’s writing lyrics, or a screenplay or film dialogue. Weeks and months are spent translating the poetry of others or writing poetry of his own.

His five collections of Urdu poetry, starting with Jaanam in 1962, have been hugely appreciated. His output is so varied, and his writing so prolific, that it’s difficult to keep track of the number of books that see the light of day each year.

He has known success in filmmaking too, only deciding to stop directing with Hu Tu Tu in 1999. In addition, his screenplays and dialogue have helped many films to enjoy a long shelf life, including Masoom, Anand and Maachis. Perhaps they could even be categorised as “modern classics”.

Gulzar’s view of world in its many forms has entered our cultural lives – and this is particularly true of his lyrics. They have been many excellent songwriters before him, but he is perhaps the only lyricist whose songs enjoy international acclaim and have even appealed to those who do not understand Urdu or Hindi or are unaware of the importance of the film in which they appear.

I’m thinking of “Chhaiyan Chhaiyan”, famous worldwide as the “train song”. This song undoubtedly increased the popularity of Shah Rukh Khan and found an army of likely and unlikely fans. In the Times of India (March 17, 2018), the physicist Maulik Parikh describes a banquet held in Mumbai in honour of Stephen Hawking when “a crowd of awkward physicists stood meekly aside as Hawking zoomed onto the dance floor and whirled his wheelchair to the boisterous beat of ‘Chhaiyan Chhaiyan’”.

The same is true of “Jai Ho”. This AR Rahman song is recognisable from its first riff. It won Rahman two Oscars, and an Oscar for Gulzar’s lyrics. For millions, the song “Naam gum jaayega, chehara badal jaayega, meri awaaz hi pahachaan hai, gar yaad rahe” has become synonymous with the much-loved Lata Mangeshkar and was played on the radio and umpteen television channels following her passing – sounding like her personal anthem.

I asked Gulzar Saab why some songs become immortal, and here is what he said:

“There is no one way of defining how a song becomes immortal. There’s the voice, the tune, the poetry, the screen presence of the actor miming on the screen, the direction, the shot divisions, etc. There are many elements to a song. So I don’t believe one element alone can make a song immortal. Songs, like films, reflect the times in which they are created. The way morals change, values change. I was telling you about my working on a history of lyrics. Since 1931, when sound entered films, there was an invasion of music and songs. The 1932 film Indra Sabha had 71 songs. Prose was given less importance. And that was true of many of the films of that period. Until the 40s there was greater use of rural dialects: Purbi, Avadhi, Brij Bhasha, Bhojpuri. The reason was that film stories were largely set in villages and so we see the city boy come to the village, ‘the pardesi’. It became a tradition for us to include the city boy arriving in rural life.

By 1945, the language changed again. Urban Hindi became dominant – khadi boli. It’s because the film subjects changed. Film stories were set in cities. Then there was the freedom struggle movement and so you find many patriotic songs – songs of freedom. 

Take the poet Sahir Sahib who entered films in 1947. He became so disappointed by the new establishment that he wrote against it later – take his parody on poet Iqbal’s “Saara Jahan se acha hindostan hamara.’  It became ‘Chinoo Arab hamaara… rehene ko ghar nahin hai saara jahan hamara.’

Through the medium of songs one can identify the values of the period. Take “Sunday ki Sunday aana meri jaan Sunday ke Sunday”. In those days if parents heard their child singing this song, they were scolded. I think that song was before its time, but I don’t believe anyone would bat an eyelid today.  Would they?”

The long conversations we had have given me some insight into the beauty of the Urdu language, and above all, the importance of rigour and discipline in doing whatever we do.

Also read:

‘I suggested we keep the chorus in Malayalam’: Gulzar on the making of ‘Jiya Jale’ from ‘Dil Se’

Gulzar: ‘Words should amaze or amuse, only then will listeners want to understand the song’