By Nirupama Dutt
He sat between two great names of Indian films—filmmaker Bimal Roy and music director Sachin Dev Burman. He rubbed the stubble on his cheek and his eyes behind thick spectacles had a far-away dreamy look. ``Bimal Da'' and ``Sachin Da'' were both trying to explain the situation to which the song was to be written. They both argued about the picturisation of the song and the character who was to sing it. The character was Kalyani, made immortal by Nutan, in ``Bandini''. The daughter of a postmaster of the village, Kalyani finds herself in love with Vikas, a freedom fighter, played by Ashok Kumar. She yearns to see him but she also hesitates and these were the feelings that were to be put into the song. The writer with a stubble took home the tune, the story, the situation and the character wove it in the images of moon and night and the song was born:
``Mora gora ang lai le
Mohe shyam rang dayi de
Chhup jaoongi raat hi mein
Mohe pee ka sang dayi de.''
And when the song reached the people many wanted to know who was the lyricist and they were told he was a shy assistant to Bimal Roy. Yes, poet Gulzar had arrived with his first song. Later, Gulzar spread out in many directions -- scriptwriting, dialogue writing and direction. But it was the poet in him which gave a new metaphor to the tender moments on celluloid.
From the song in ``Bandini to the lyrics of one of his recent films ``Ijaazat'' is a long journey with setbacks aplenty but the poet in him survived them all and one of the most moving songs of passion and parting reached the people through ``ijaazat'' which like his two latter films ``Lekin'' and ``Libaas'' did not find many takers:
``Mera kuchh samaan tumhare
Paas padha hai…
Who sawan ke kuchh bheege-
Bheege din rakhe hain
Aur mere ek khat mein lipti raat
Padhi hai…
Yeh raat bujha do, mera who
Samaan lauta do…''
This poet of delicate nuances who changed to the moodof film songs also because the inheritor of Shaera Meena Kumari's poetry. Incidentally, ``Bandini'' had given debut to two young Punjabi men—Gulzar as a lyricist, and Dharmendra as an actor, who appeared in a small role as doctor who is abandoned by Nutan for the ailing Ashok Kumar to the intense strains of Sachin Da'shaunting song -- ``O're maajhi.''
The two provided a starling contrast, Dharmendra whom later film columnist Devi christened ``Dharm Garam''was the he-man who took what came his way and moved along, and Gulzar the soft dreamy-eyed poet very often at odds with the demands of the film world. Yet both shared a close association with Meena Kumari. While Dharmendra became the inflictor of more wound on Hindi cinema's tragedy, queen, it was Gulzar who put the balm by makinga film for her``Mere Apne'' when she was alive and after her death editing and publishing her poetry and giving her a celluloid tribute in the documentary ``Shaera''.
Gulzar was born on August 18, 1936, in the small town of Dina in Jhelum district of Pakistan in a Sikh family and his name was Sampooran Singh Kalra. He migrated with his family to Delhi in 1947 and his father started a small business in Sabzi Mandi. Gulzar did hismatriculation from Delhi United Christian School. His first attemptat poetry when he was in the school at Delhi where the Maulvi sahib would put them through the exercise of ``baitbazi'', an antakshri of sorts with borrowed couplets. Gulzar recalls, ``My memory was weak and I could never store enough couplets in my mind. My friend Akbar Rashid on the other hand knew so many couplets that I started making up my own. This was how I picked up the craft of poetry.'' The art, of course, followed through the smiles and sighs of a life lived with stubborn sincerity and understated passion. And these emotions were re-woven in a song for ``Khamoshi'' which had the listeners bewitched:
``Hamne dekhi hai in aankhon ki
Mehakti khushboo
Haath se chhoo ke isse rishton ka
Ilzaam na do
Sirf ehsaas hai yeh rooh se
Mehsoos karo
Pyar ko pyar his rehne do, koi
Naamna do.''
The song remains till date one of the magical numbers, which cannot be penned by just anyone. And these days when the songs of the times are ``Tirchhi topi wale'', papa kehate hain badha kaam karega'' or ``kabutar ja ja ja'', the lyrics of Gulzar which in a unique manner spoke of the silence of the intense emotions of the soul seem to be rare indeed.
Gulzar's songs are very close to life and yet in their aesthetic flight they acquire an athereal quality which is complex. And taking a couplet of Ghalib he went on to write a song for ``Mausam'' which was drenched in the passions of theboy and girl next door. In ``Dil dhoondta hai'', he brought to words the charmsofthe summer nights of the north Indian plains;
``Ya garmiyan ki raat jab
purvaian chalein
Thande safed bistar par jaagein
der tak
Taron ko dekhate rehein chat
Par parhe huye''
The night and the moon are the necessary images of our films but Gulzar in his songs did away with the clichés and found for them symbols afresh. In one song he would turn the night into a beggar woman walking out with the bowl of the moon in hand and in another he turned the moon into a ``bindiya'' shining from the forehead of the night. And in a duet in ``Aandhi'', where the mood is one of looking before and after, he willed the moon not to sink from the skies:
``Tum jo keh do to
Aaj ki raat chand doobega nahin
Raat ko rok lo
Raat ki baat hai
Aur zindagi baqi to nahin…''
And Gulzar's own life moved from the early days of struggle to a beautiful white house on Pali Hill named ``Boskiana'' after his daughter. His marriage to the femme fatate, Rakhi, was turbulent and ended in separation. He inspired Deepti Naval, an actress, to p;ublish her poems in a book -- ``Lamhe Lamhe.'' He turned to writing for children for the love of his daughter, whom he described as ``Bittu Rani Boski, Boond giri hai os ki''
The latest issue of a film glossy turns to Gulzar for a view from the ringside and the introduction has the ring of ``lost and gone'' and it is lamented: ``The world Gulzar loved so deeply, is at its self-destructive peak. Ugly, dehumanized. It's a world peopled with transients who travel light.'' In the interview Gulzar takes mirth in being ``Unemployed'' and adds ``There is something I'm looking forward to, I am going to release my book of poems. If you ask me what I'dreally like to do, it's write poems. That gives me the most pleasure. It's all mine.''
Well, this would please those who have loved him most for his poetry even if a laved says that there's no meter in it. And the poet's retort is fine enough for there is poetry in it. Gulzar once gifted a volume of his poetry to an admirer and spelt her name wrong while signing it and to make amends as a poet would be added on a line ``with the right spelling of LOVE!'' And so we wait for poems which will spell out as never before love, life and all that it brings.
POEMS
Last Night
Last night dew dropped softly
On the tender lips of buds
Rubbing cheeks with flowers
In the shadow of night's
Blue veil, the dew opened pages of fairy tales
Two souls were swimming in
The gentle stirrings of the heart
Holding out the sky
On their dainty wings.
Last night was very bright
Last night dreams were fair
last night – was spent with you!
**
Moon Madness
Come stand on my shoulders
Then raise your heels
And kiss the face of the moon
Haven't you seen tonight
Crawling on its elbows
The moon has come so close
**
Tread Softly
Look, tread softly
No, softer still.
The feet shouldn't
Ring out noise
For scattered in
Loneliness are dreams
made of glass.
No dream should break
No one should wake.
The dream will die first.
