Why We Can Never Pigeonhole Gulzar's Genius

In the early years after Independence, the Hindi film industry fostered an elegant repertoire of decorous poets. Songs penned by Sahir, Majrooh, Shakeel, Shailendra and Kaifi created a treasure trove of lyrics in the refined Awadhi tradition of Urdu/Hindustani. The only notable exception in this era, who departed from this genre and yet manged to thrive in the midst of these intellectual giants was the young Sampooran Singh Kalra, with the nom de plume of Gulzar.

Gulzar moved away from the classical ghazal form and over reliance on esoteric language. His songs derived inspiration from quotidian occurrences – romance, longing, nostalgia and nature expressed in simple verses, colloquialisms, replete with quirky metaphors and earthy references. ‘Humne dekhi hain in aankhon ki mehekti khushboo’ – translates to ‘I have witnessed the fragrant beauty of your eyes’; ‘badri hata ke chanda; chupe se jhanke chanda’ – translates to ‘the moon casts the clouds aside and quietly peeps at me’; ‘barfili sardiyon mein kisi bhi pahad par; vadi mein goonjti huin khamoshiyan suni’ translates to ‘in snowy winters on remote mountain tops, I heard the valleys echo with the sounds of silence’ – typical Gulzar lyrics which broke barriers of form and literary discipline and popularised conversational Hindi. His illustrious contemporaries, though more accomplished, didn’t articulate fragile human emotions with the piercing sentimentality and relatability that Gulzar did with subtlety and finesse.

Such is the genius of Gulzar that to pigeon-hole him as an accessible lyricist with a proclivity towards romanticising the mundane, would be a grave transgression. The simplicity and timelessness of his lyrics come from great erudition and wide range of scholarly influences. In this piece I have tried to highlight the range of Gulzar’s inspirations to underscore the prosperity of his oeuvre.

Gulzar’s first song was ‘mora gora ang lai le’ from Bimal Roy’s Bandini (1963). The lyrics capture the age-old folk tale of Radha’s clandestine rendezvous with Lord Krishna in the dead of night, where she fears that her fair complexion may expose her in the dark and bring upon disrepute. In the song she prays that she be blessed with dark skin so she can melt into the shadows and be united with her lover. The song has the words ‘ek laaj roke paiyaan, ek moh kheenchey baiyaan’ which means ‘propriety restrains my feet; but temptation tugs at my arms’. These lyrics seem inspired by Ghalib’s (1797-1868) ‘imaan mujhe roke hain; to kheenche hai mujhe kufr’ which translates to ‘my conscience holds me back; whereas I am pulled towards sin/heresy’. Whereas Ghalib’s couplet was a veiled critique of religious orthodoxy, Gulzar uses it in the conflict between social mores and individual desire.  

Gulzar’s ‘challa’, (Jab Tak Hai Jaan, 2012) captures the free spiritedness of an unattached and adventurous Shah Rukh Khan exploring the streets of London. Adapted from Punjabi folk culture, it has a line ‘lokon sufne ch milne daa wadaa usda; saari saari raat naa ankh lagdi’ which is inspired by Ghalib’s playfully paradoxical couplet ‘ta fir na intezaar mein neend aaye hai raat bhar; aane ka ahad kar gaye aaye jo khwab mein’ – both of which loosely translate to ‘she promised to come in my dream, in anticipation of which, I could barely sleep a wink’.

His song ‘dil to bachha hai ji’, from Ishqiya (2010), is picturised on an ageing Naseeruddin Shah’s new found infatuation for a younger woman. A cautious and cynical thief, he drops his guard and finds himself falling in love again. This song has a line ‘saari jawani katara ke kaati; peeri mein takara gaye hain’ which translates to ‘I spent my youth in hesitation; but have become reckless with age’. This line is inspired from Meer Taqi Meer’s (1723-1810) line ‘ahad e jawani ro ro ke kata; peeri mein lee ankhen moond’ which translates to ‘I spent my precious youth crying; I have finally decided to look away with age’.

One of his songs in Mausum (1975) starts with Ghalib’s couplet ‘Dil dhoondta hai, fir wahi fursat ke raat din; baithe rahe tasawwoor-ye-jaana kiye huye’ which translates to ‘the heart still yearns for those leisurely days and nights; where I could immerse myself in your thoughts’. The rest of the song is a meditative reminiscence of the protagonists’ younger days, spent in blitheful innocence with memories of warm glow of the winter sun, easterly winds in the summer and snow-clad mountains. By using Ghalib’s couplet as a prologue Gulzar sets the tone for a bittersweet eulogy of lost romance.

‘Chal chaiyya chaiyya’, from Dil Se (1998), is probably Gulzar’s best known inter-generational bestseller. It translates to ‘come with me to rest in the shade of love’. This is inspired by the prolific Punjabi sufi saint, Bulleh Shah’s (1680-1757) Punjabi qawwali ‘tere ishq ne nachya kare ke thaiyya thaiyya’. ‘Thaiyya thaiyya’ deals with the complete surrender of the lover to the beloved and conflates the idea of divine worship with romantic and corporal love. The spurned lover believes he/she can placate an anguished partner with a delirious dance of devotion. In this case, Gulzar has picked up the phonetic rhythm of ‘thaiyya thaiyya’ and lent it to the syncopated beats of the chugging hill side train set to AR Rahman’s superb musical score.

His song ‘zeehal-e-maskin makun ba-ranjish Bahaale hijra bechara dil hai’, from Ghulami (1985) translates to ‘don’t scoff at my suffering, my wretched heart is still bruised from our separation’ is inspired by the spiritual disciple of the sufi saint Nizamuddin Aulia and father of modern day ‘qawwali’- Amir Khusrau (1253–1325). Khusrau’s Persian lines ‘zehaal-e-miskeen makun taghaful, duraye naina banaye batiyan’ translate to ‘don’t ignore my pitiable state by blandishing your eyes and weaving excuses’. Khusrau’s rendition was a pastiche composition with each couplet having the first line in chaste Persian which was the sole preserve of the nobility, and the second in Braj-Bhasha – or the common language spoken by masses in North India. Gulzar’s version retains a similar pattern of using Persian and contemporary Hindi which serves as fitting homage to Khusrau.

In ‘Satrangi Re’ from Dil Se (1998) Gulzar has crafted hypnotic lyrics signifying the seven stages of love as per Sufi tradition, which loosely translate to attraction, infatuation, love, reverence, worship, insanity followed by death. He has aptly bookended the song with one of Ghalib’s most famous couplets, also improvised by Sahir Ludhiyanavi in Barasat Ki Raat (in 1960) : ‘Ishq par zor nahi, hai ye who aatish Ghalib; jo lagaye na lage or bujhaye na bane’; which translates to ‘love is not bound by force, it is a flame which cannot be ignited or extinguished’. Gulzar’s ingenuity lies in using this celebrated couplet to segue into the desperate undercurrent of desire running through the song.

Though Gulzar’s bibliography of lyrics is superlative, probably his greatest accomplishment is scripting, directing and bringing on screen the tumultuous life and times of arguably India’s greatest poet – Ghalib. The series starts with a voiceover by Gulzar introducing us to ‘ballimaran’ – Ghalib’s lane in Chadni Chowk, the fortified old quarters of Delhi. ‘Ballimaran ki mohalle ki wo pecheeda daleelo ki si gallian’ translates to ‘those alleys of Ballimaran, twisting and winding like intricate arguments’ are inspired TS Elliot’s ‘The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock’ which has the line ‘streets that follow like a tedious argument’. Another line Gulzar uses is ‘dhundlai hui sham ke be-noor andhere, aise deewaron se muh jod ke chalte hain’ which translates to ‘the twilight’s creeping darkness caresses the doorways in the street’ seems inspired by Elliot’s ‘the yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes’. Gulzar’s inspiration from Elliot creates an evocative imagery taking us to a freezing wintry evening in the recesses of Old Delhi’s by-lanes more than a hundred and fifty years ago.

The brilliance of Gulzar goes beyond his scholarly inspirations and extends to both the prolificacy and breadth of output. It is incredible that he has churned out variegated songs for six decades ranging from ‘tum pukar lo’, to ‘chaddi pehen ki phool khila hai’ to ‘lakdi ki kathi’, to ‘mera kuch saman’; to ‘beedi jalai le’, to ‘goli maar bheje mein’ to ‘chappa chappa charkha chale’ and ‘mujhe jaan na kaho meri jaan’. Gulzar has the protean gift of adeptly writing for the Bengali bourgeoisie ‘bhadralok’, a wondrous child, a ruffian village fair in the cow belt, a bucolic Punjabi harvest, tentative lovers exploring their intimacy. In 60 years of his experiments with poetry, he has truly ‘flourished’, living up to the ‘Urdu’ meaning of his pseudonym, ‘Gulzar’.