Gulzar in Griha Pravesh (1979).
Cinema and poetry seem to be such kindred art forms that one would imagine a lot of poets to have turned to filmmaking. In reality, such instances are relatively rare. Maya Angelou directed just the one film, Down in the Delta (1998), and Ethan Coen published a book of poetry called The Drunken Driver Has the Right of Way. Kiarostami was a poet, so were Pasolini and Jean Cocteau. Indian cinema has produced a few poet-filmmakers of its own, such as Buddhadeb Dasgupta and Kidar Sharma. But probably the one filmmaker who has also been staggeringly prolific as both a poet and songwriter is Gulzar.
The Western world predominantly sees Indian cinema in two extremities: either as the garish vaudevillian spectacle that everyone broadly recognizes as Bollywood, or the stark realistic storytelling by the likes of Satyajit Ray and Ritwik Ghatak. But with at least eleven major film industries churning out thousands of films in as many languages and more, Indian cinema is hardly a monolith. One of these industries constitutes Hindi cinema, which gleefully calls itself Bollywood, and is quite multifarious in its variety. Within itself, Hindi cinema encompasses disparate sensibilities and a diverse array of voices.
Since its early days, Hindi cinema has been loud and rambunctious. Outlandish plots interspersed by song and dance routines were delivered with the sole purpose to amuse and entertain. The art-house cinema movement evolved as a response to this kind of shrill and blunt filmmaking. As opposed to mainstream films, Indian art cinema was characterized by a focus on stark realism and social issues. To the untrained audience, these films seemed staid, slow-paced, and somber. While the educated elite championed such films, the masses preferred watching the regular melodrama they were used to.
Gradually, some filmmakers came up with a middle ground—a “middle-of-the-road” cinema. These films blended an artistic sensibility with popular forms (like musical numbers and set pieces) which made the characters and settings more identifiable. It was a coming together of intellectual cinema and populist entertainment. Songs were still being used, but they were cinematic devices now, designed to push the narrative forward. And this is where the cinema of Gulzar comes in.
Kitaab (1977).
The characters in Gulzar’s films aren’t “real” in the sense that you’d bump into them on the street. But they aren’t fantastical figments either. The characters that populate Gulzar’s films walk straight out of books. And it figures, because a lion’s share of his filmography are adaptations. Out of seventeen directed features, at least ten had their origins in literature. Unlike the acclaimed directors of world cinema, Gulzar’s films are not visual masterpieces. Far from it. The camera in his films doesn’t wield any magic. Like novelists and short story writers, his play is with characters and with time. Gulzar is a poet, first and foremost. In his verse, emotions are tangible. They are often difficult to discern but easy to touch. Words and expressions perform functions they were not quite meant for. Pain and melancholy pervade his poems, and he uses them to illuminate human relationships. And it is this quality that one finds in his films.
In Kitaab (1977), 12-year-old Babla is the protagonist, but he’s hardly what one would call “just a kid.” He has profound observations about the world, and is rather frustrated by how grown-ups treat children like him. His elder sister doesn’t respect him at all, chiding him to do his lessons all the time. In the dead of the night, Babla leaves home. Gulzar adapted Kitaab from a Bengali short story called Pothik by Samaresh Basu. He imbues the child Babla with personality, which was practically unheard-of in Hindi films till then. Children always existed in the fringes, and even when the plot focused on them, they were angelic little beings without one evil thought crossing their mind. But Gulzar’s Kitaab opens with Babla and his mates being reprimanded for wondering on the blackboard how the teacher enjoyed himself on his wedding night. They beat the desk and sing about a popular brand of underwear. On their way from school, Babla and his best friend Pappu discuss what breast milk tastes like. They often share a smoke on the sly. While on the run, Babla has experiences which are not for the fainthearted. It is one of those films which are about children, but not essentially meant for them.
Aandhi (1975).
Kitaab has flaws, some of them quite on the nose. There are continuity lapses—there are details which indicate the film is set in Mumbai, but a police station is from New Delhi. But where Kitaab triumphs is in the characterization and the dialogue. None of Gulzar’s characters can exist in any other film or any other universe. Each of them have quirks which are quite their own. In one telling example from Aandhi (1975), Aarti (Suchitra Sen) informs her husband J.K. (Sanjeev Kumar) of her pregnancy through a telegram instead of just telling him, even though they live together. She asks the domestic servant to post the telegram even before he has left for work so it reaches him on time. The servant, Binda Kaka, who had raised Aarti, came with her to her husband’s house after marriage. But when Aarti leaves J.K. for a career in politics, Binda chooses to stay behind. In the same film, Aarti’s campaign manager refuses alcohol when offered, only to sip it from an unmarked bottle, insisting it’s medicine for his kidneys. This sort of idiosyncratic characterization was a hallmark of Gulzar’s cinematic output.
As a young boy named Sampooran Singh Kalra, Gulzar grew up in the lap of literature. It all began with an obsession for detective stories. He used to have to sleep in his father’s shop and since everyone dined and retired early, Gulzar found the time to lose himself in worlds of murder, fantasy and intrigue. The local lending library supplied an unending variety of books, mostly in Urdu. It was the day Gulzar stumbled upon an Urdu translation of a book by Rabindranath Tagore that his head exploded. Not only did it introduce him to a new form of expression but a whole new worldview, which transformed Gulzar and the manner in which he processed reality. It was for the first time that he was introduced to the pleasures of serious literature. He made a conscious effort to learn Bengali in order to read Tagore’s work in its original form. Around the same time, he discovered Sarat Chandra Chatterjee, in whose stories about middle class Bengal he discovered his own Punjabi family reflected.
His love for Bengal and for literature deepened as he came in touch with filmmaker Bimal Roy and his crew. Roy and his team had migrated from Calcutta in the aftermath of the Bengal Famine and the World War. He was at the end of his career when Gulzar joined the fray. For his film Bandini (1963), Roy was on the lookout for someone who understood Bengali and Hindi well enough to write a song based on Vaishnavite poetry. As it turns out, Gulzar ticked both the boxes, and he wrote his first song “Mora gora ang lai le.” He also wrote another song for Bimal Roy’s production Kabuliwala (1961), which was based on Rabindranath Tagore’s story, and which Gulzar had read in the Bengali original. While working on these films, he made acquaintance with accomplished singers and music directors like Sachin Dev Burman, Salil Chowdhury, Hemanta Mukherjee, and other accomplished artists who happened to hail from Bengal. His reading of Bengali literature continued. By this time, Gulzar had shaken off old identities—he was no longer Sampooran Singh Kalra. He had adopted the pseudonym Gulzar for all practical purposes. His mentor Bimal Roy assigned him the task of writing a screenplay on Samaresh Basu’s Bengali novel Amrita Kumbher Sandhane. Gulzar read it and wrote Amrit Kumbh ki Khoj Mein, but the film didn’t see the light of the day because Bimal Roy passed away before it could be completed. Roy’s understated filmmaking, socialist underpinnings, and literary themes had a profound impact on Gulzar. He continued to work with Hrishikesh Mukherjee, a fellow Bimal Roy protege and a legendary filmmaker in his own right. They created magic together, like the seminal Anand (1971) for which Gulzar wrote the screenplay and Mukherjee was the director. In the same year, Gulzar took the plunge and directed his first movie.
Mere Apne (1971).
One of Gulzar’s abiding obsessions is time. Most of his characters have a past and they keep traveling back to it. All his films, barring one, have used flashback as a device to connect the past and the present. Like novels that swiftly glide between various timelines, Gulzar’s stories are effortlessly nonlinear. The narratives in his films keep traveling back and forth in time. In Mere Apne (1971), his first film (which had its origins in a Bengali story by Indra Mitra), the old woman Anandi (Meena Kumari) keeps reminiscing about her do-gooder husband and the young freedom fighters of yore as she sees gangs of young men around her get into fistfights for trivial reasons. One of them is Shyam (Vinod Khanna), whose feeling of alienation is magnified when he sees his ex-flame strut around with her new husband. Running into her opens up old wounds, and he breaks into a wistful song about loneliness.
Since the very first talkie, Hindi films have always included songs, a practice that continues to this day. The popularity of songs allowed filmmakers to employ composers who would make the tunes, and poets who would write lyrics to go with them. This evolved into a rich tradition of music directors, lyricists, and choreographers who were artists in their own right. Gulzar is a poet in that tradition. He started his career writing songs, and when he got around to directing movies, he couldn’t do away with them. But unlike his more mainstream counterparts, the songs in his films weren’t “items,” but crucial narrative tools. Besides, through the songs, his characters were able to transmit his poetry to audiences. But on one occasion, Gulzar was compelled to make his only song-less film.
He came across a short story called The Thirteenth Victim written by Khwaja Ahmad Abbas, himself a writer and filmmaker of some repute. Gulzar borrowed the germ of the story and expanded on it. But it was such a gripping tale that he decided not to have any songs which might distract people from the plot. The film, Achanak (1973), is about a man on death row about to die of a blood clot in his brain. The doctors struggle to save his life, so that he might be put to death by the state. As he lays on the operation table, we go back into his past life to know what led him to this fate. With Achanak, Gulzar takes his appetite for flashbacks to another level. There are multiple layers of flashbacks. Much like Inception’s dream within a dream, Achanak contains flashbacks within flashbacks. But it’s much simpler than it sounds. Gulzar doesn’t have to indulge in any complex gimmickry, and the audience isn’t confused one bit.
Parichay (1972) was the apotheosis of Gulzar’s musical ambitions. With shades of The Sound of Music in its plot, Parichay was adapted from a novel called Rangeen Uttarain by Raj Kumar Maitra. Gulzar collaborated with Rahul Dev Burman as composer for the first time, creating some enduring melodies. Gulzar and Burman would go on to form a long and productive partnership that became the stuff of legends. In the film, a hapless teacher is recruited to rein in a group of unruly kids. As is Gulzar’s wont, the story moves back and forth in time, throwing light on why the children just refuse to behave.
The only linear film in Gulzar’s oeuvre is Namkeen (1981). It moves in a single narrative sweep from beginning to end, with the exception of one short flashback—a song. A truck driver rents a derelict house owned by a loquacious old woman and her three daughters. In the godforsaken countryside, these five human beings build a nest of their own. Namkeen is one of Gulzar’s most accomplished films. He manages to create a world quite unlike any of his other films. It is a spare, bleak village at the edge of civilization. Gulzar has captured the countryside in other films but they were picturesque, idyllic. But Namkeen’s village is barren. The house is in shambles, as if a little nudge will break it down, much like the characters in the film. But even in the midst of this desolation and despair, Gulzar manages to evoke poetry. Every character, every moment, and even the setting of the film is infused with a sense of authenticity and lyricism that is quite Gulzar’s own.
The plot of Namkeen was based on Akal Bashanta, a short story written by Samaresh Basu, who became one of Gulzar’s favorite authors for adaptation. Another favorite was Sarat Chandra Chatterjee, who he read as a young boy. Gulzar adapted Sarat Chandra’s story Pandit Moshai as Khushboo (1974). Tagore, who made him fall in love with literature for the first time, partially inspired Lekin… (1990), which was loosely based on Tagore’s story Khudito Pashan, about an enchanting ghost who haunts an ancient mansion. And this is central to appreciating Gulzar’s directorial work: understanding that it springs from literature and poetry. Unlike the other masters of world cinema, Gulzar’s camera doesn’t paint visually rich images. It is his characters and the interplay of emotions between them that pervade his work. Babla from Kitaab is not an average school kid, Namkeen’s Gherulal is not an average truck-driver, and neither is Brindavan from Khushboo an average doctor. They belong to the works of literature from which Gulzar borrows them.
Ijaazat (1986).
Trains and railway platforms appear in every other Gulzar film, often playing a pivotal role. They appear in the climax of Parichay, they are an important part of Babla’s journey in Kitaab, and the central conceit of Ijaazat (1986) unfolds in a railway waiting room. The plot of Ijaazat was based on a short story called Jotugriho by Subodh Ghosh, which had earlier been made in Bengali directed by Tapan Sinha. Though Gulzar bought the rights from Ghosh, he rewrote and altered the material enough to make it his own. An estranged couple run into each other after ages, while waiting for their respective trains which run in different directions. An annoying habit, a familiar fragrance, a passing remark—every small gesture brings back fragmented memories, remembrance of half lives spent together. Like the best of Gulzar’s work, Ijaazat is soaked in poetry.
Gulzar’s last literary adaptation was of his own story, Seema, as Libaas (1988). The film was never released, as the producer didn’t believe the film was commercially viable. It lies somewhere in the vaults, completed. Libaas has been screened only twice, at film festivals. Regardless of its fate, the film’s songs, which were released on an album before the film, a practice common to most Hindi movies, have attained cult status. Gulzar hasn’t made a film in the past 23 years. Around the late '90s, he hung up his directorial boots to focus on writing. He continues to write songs for films rather successfully, including “Jai Ho,” which he wrote for Danny Boyle’s Slumdog Millionaire. The song won him an Academy Award as well as a Grammy, almost certainly the only successful film director in the world to be honored thus. He was also conferred with five National Film Awards in India, India’s highest literary honor called the Sahitya Akademi Award, and the Padma Bhushan, India’s third-highest civilian honor. Gulzar is a wordsmith and a poet of staggering genius, but he is also a filmmaker of great caliber, and more audiences around the world should recognize his unique voice.