That timeless gardener of words

There is no provincial competition guys and certainly no need to take this personally I just feel that of all nonHindi cultures in North India both from a modern and historical perspective Bengal and Punjab bear the deepest cultural rootsoeuvremdashamong other aspects in music and literatureBoth geographies also got politically split over religion These cultures therefore have an equally loved twin on either side of a manmade border Still Punjabis and Bengalis in terms of musicliterature but also otherwise couldnrsquot be more separate from each other Sampooran Singh Kalra was born Punjabi It turns out he grew up Bengalimdashmetaphorically in Bombay as the possessed writer reader colleague and friend Gulzar His pseudonym means lsquogardenrsquo I presume Why did he call himself that He doesnrsquot sayWhat kind of a person publishes a memoir at 87 which is but altogether about other people anyway Even gratefully titling it Actuallyhellip I Met Them Reporterwriters do that best I guessBut Gulzar painting prose poetry stories screenplays is the opposite of a journalistmdashor a journal artist as it were He deals primarily in the world of fiction even fantasy whether in films or music through lyricsCover of Gulzars memoir ActuallyI Met ThemPlayful enough to invent words to fit into metre leave aside reality sometimes inspiring his later colleagues to do the same Although Prasoon Joshirsquos meaningless lsquoMasakali Masakalirsquo does not equal lsquoChhaiya Chhaiyarsquo by any stretchWay more playful when similarly chilling with children lsquoChaddi pehenke phool khila hai phool khila hai A flower has bloomed wearing underwear an underwearrsquo Or going borderline pornographic with words that confounded me when I heard them first lsquoZubaan pe laga laga re namak ishq ka Dropped on my tongue hey the salty nectar of loversquoWhich isnrsquot to suggest Gulzarrsquos works have at any time shied away from reflecting on more transientpolitical truths even if he arrives at them quite tangentially You learn from his memoir that only when his film ldquoAandhi was in the twentysecond or twentythird week in India about to complete a silver jubilee in theatresrdquo that it was banned by the government that is usually averse to reality Thatrsquos when they got it Surely Aandhi sounded like GandhiThe reputably aloof Suchitra Sen played director Gulzarrsquos version of Indira Gandhi in the film Sen could cry for any scene in Aandhi 1975 Gulzar recalls so long as he carried along a cassetteplayer to the set and played the lines from the filmrsquos soundtrack lsquoTum jo keh do toh aaj ki raat chaand dubega nahin chaand ko rok lo If you wish the moon will not wane tonight hold back the nightrsquo The opening verse of that popular songmdashlsquoTere bina zindagi se koi shikwa toh nahinhellip Tere bina zindagi bhi lekin zindagi toh nahin Except you I have no issues with lifehellip Without you I have no life worth having issues overrsquomdashremain the most realistromantic words ever according to me As a music buff Irsquom not even much into lyricsWhatrsquos a great writer if not blessed with intuitionmdashover how others feellive often forever thereby the universal relevance of their works How does one sharpen intuition primarilypractically plonked in a desk over multiple generations as Gulzar has The other thing to appreciate about great writers is their power of retentionmdashto commit to memory an observationthoughtsituation exhaling them in various formsIn his memoir which is actually journalistic lsquoas told to Sanchari Mukherjeersquo over a Bengali newspaperrsquos Sunday column Gulzar brings forth his much younger eyes looking in awe with warmth at the men of Bombay mostly Bengali he first worked with Starting with his mentor filmmaker Bimal Roy Upon whose death the singerentrepreneur Hemant Kumar took him and excolleagues under his wings After Partition Bombayrsquos film industry came to be dominated by Punjabis with roots in the then Pakistan particularly with the male starsystem that followed Bengalis remained an equally influential thinktank of artists fueling this film industry Gulzar was the accidental Punjabi among Bengalis Not that there were camps Or were thereTrivia buffs will know the film Anand 1971 directed by Hrishikesh Mukherjee also Bimal Royrsquos mentee was dedicated to Raj Kapoor Who left Mukherjee in the lurch at the last minute for him to cast Rajesh Khanna in the filmrsquos lead role Kishore Kumar I learnt from Gulzar As with others who knew him Gulzar paints a picture of the maverick Kumar that defies a believable biographySimilar portraits that emerge of Bengalis in the Bombay film industry are of a fun potentially lazy lot pursuing everything else they loved as well rather than seeing themselves as factories producing popular art Lazy is the last possibly Bengali trait you might attribute to the 1934born Gulzar thoughOver six decades hersquos relentlessly regaled us with an artistic output across forms touching so many chords that I notice astounds fans into deliriummdashin his casual company stepping into his Pali Hill bungalow which is rather rare for an Indian writer And then they verbosely explain ldquoActuallyhellip I Met Gulzarrdquo Irsquove myself been intimidated enough to duck a couple of chances to meet him as a journalist So Irsquove just left a few questions above No interview the beauty is in admiring Gulzar from a distance Mayank Shekhar attempts to make sense of mass culture He tweets mayankw14Send your feedback to mailbagmiddaycomThe views expressed in this column are the individualrsquos and donrsquot represent those of the paper