How Gulzar Sees: Sights and Spots in Songs of Gulzar

Many years ago, I heard Gulzar speaking about his transition from being just a lyricist and poet to a lyricist-poet film director. It was early seventies — those turbulent years that were signalling an even more turbulent decade that threatened to arrive soon and subsume the life and freedoms of Indians at the time. The “angry young man” — symbolic of the anger blowing in and rising from Indian streets — was bursting on to the big screen with full force. Gulzar had just made his debut as a film director with Mere Apne (1971) — a movie that featured an illustrious ensemble, which included Meena Kumari who, sadly, passed away just a few months after the release of the film.

Anyway. At this gathering where Gulzar was speaking about his transition, he recounted how, as a film director, he liked to work and shoot in big indoor sets. It suited his temperament, he said, to work indoors, away from the maddening crowd as it were, and to make his movies in peace and without the strains and strife of outdoor locations. Then, one day, Mahesh Bhatt visited one of Gulzar’s sets. He came, he looked, and admonished Gulzar: “Why do you remain cooped up in these dark, dingy sets, in artificial lights? Come outside … and see what the sun does to your songs and films!”

It was an advice that Gulzar took to heart. In his very next movies, Aandhi and Mausam (both 1975), Gulzar ventured out in the sun and shot his movies and songs on-location. The difference and beauty is for everyone to see. In Aandhi, the backdrops are dominated by imposing, blue mountains, and the sun-bathed, green hills roll down elegantly to kiss the banks of a shimmering river or two. It is in this setting, amidst wavering shades of tall trees, that the two lovers (played by Sanjeev Kumar and Suchitra Sen) decide to spend a day of their existence.

It is thrilling to watch Suchitra Sen — clad in a saree that keeps fluttering in the breeze — hopping down the rolling slopes, blushing, smiling, stopping only in the arms of a beaming Sanjeev Kumar. They tread the slopes and the forest hand-in-hand; they hum and sing: Iss mod se jaate hain kuch sust kadam raste, kuch tez kadam raahein…

But the beauty of Gulzar’s songs is as much abstract as it is material. The physical locations, and even the actors for that matter, play only a supporting role in his songs. The actors take centerstage in the scenes that precede and follow the songs, but in his songs, the sights themselves, both physical and abstract, are the hero. For instance, in Iss mod se jaate hain, in addition to the physical beauty of the surroundings, the dramatic, forlorn image of a patthar ki haveli collides and blends into the peaceful, sunlit image of sheeshe ke gharaunde and the humble, yet dripping with love, tinko ke nashemann. Together, they evoke a sense of both hope and anxiety: the hope to reach such places (where love could be found and nestled), and the anxiety that emerges from the fear of not being able to find and arrive. Sanjeev Kumar and Suchitra Sen, lip-syncing the lines of the song, do a spectacular job. But equally great actors could have done it too. The words, and the sights that they refer to and invoke, are what is indispensable here.

In Dil dhoondta hai from Mausam, which came out in the same year, words and the images that they invoke draw us from the expanse of meadows and heights of mountains into the simple intimacies of a home. They speak of beloved, everyday nooks and corners of a class of Indian homes that have vanished from Indian cities but may still be found in smaller towns and villages. The courtyard in jaadon ki narm dhoop aur aangan mein let kar, or the open air, starlit terrace in thandi safed chaadoron pe jaagein der tak, taaron ko dekhte rahein chhat par pade hue bring back the charms of everyday life that are now (mostly) lost on us. And here again the actors, Sanjeev Kumar with Sharmila Tagore this time, brilliant as they are in personifying the sense and sensibilities of the song, play a secondary role. The sights and spots, within a home, that the song celebrates are what touch the heart the most.

Mahesh Bhatt’s advice might have heralded physical beauty in Gulzar’s songs but the abstract beauty — of places that may not necessarily exist or sights that gain a romantic halo by being unusual and unconventional — were always a signature part of Gulzar’s lyrics even in his early years. His field of perception was not limited to the terrestrial. He had his eyes on the sun, on the moon (on the moon more than the sun, going by the eclectic frequency and ways in which he has managed to draw the moon into his songs), on stars, on clouds, on breeze, on birds, and on the point where the space and the terrestrial meet and converge. In Mora gora ang lai le, an iconic song of the iconic, Bimal Roy-directed Bandini (1963), which Gulzar calls his “passport” to the film world referring to his debut as a lyricist, the setting is that of the night with all its usual sidekicks: the moon, the night sky, the dimly-lit countryside, with all the other trimmings. But the manner in which Gulzar uses the surroundings to tell the story of a girl (Nootan) in love, swelling (and swooning) with desires and a prayer, is at once both simple and sophisticated. The simplicity lies in the lyrics; the sophistication lies in the subtle abstractions that the girl falls back on to reveal her wishes of the moment to the world. Desiring to hide in the night, in the company of her lover, she admonishes the moon as it uninvitingly emerges to illuminate the night when she sings:

badari hataa ke chandaa,
chup ke se jhaanke chandaa;
tohe raahu lage bairi,
muskaaye jee jalaai ke

Once can quite vividly imagine the moon peeking in from behind a cloud, winking and smiling mischievously at the love-ridden desires and prayers of the girl on earth who wants nothing in that moment but a veil of darkness and privacy for herself and her lover. No wonder the girl, with her heart burning, wishes the moon were eclipsed … and quite rightly so!

When this song was being made, Bimal Roy, film’s director, and S.D. Burman, film’s music composer, had a stiff argument, as reported by Gulzar, for whom, as a young man trying to break out in Bombay movies, it was a matter of great fascination. Bimal Roy had decided to shoot the song indoors, inside the home of the girl in which she lived with her father. S.D. Burman, on the other hand, insisted that the girl come out from her home, and sing the song out in the open. Bimal Roy objected on the grounds that the girl (Nootan’s character in the film) hails from a modest, if not wholly conservative, family and it would be unusual for her to not be mindful of her father’s presence and instead come out in the open to sing a love song. S.D. Burman pointed towards the lyrics and its atmospherics to make his case that if the girl doesn’t come out, the song will die out of suffocation. Gulzar, struck by the passion and ferocity with which the two great artists of his time were arguing on not-so-important a matter, understood and valued the significance of detailing in a film if it has to be a good film, and how each scene and song should move ahead with conviction and logic. Finally, someone might have intervened, because S.D. Burman got his way, and the girl did come out and sang the song out in the open, in the shadow of stars and in moonshine. The song, as a result, didn’t die a breathless death … but went on to breathe and live.

Shaam ko khidki se chori chori nange paaon chaand aayega, promises Gulzar in another of his songs from the movie Saathiya (2002) and provides all the hints of how the moon (here, symbolizing the lover) will come: galiyon se aayega … seeti bajaega … neem ke ped se … paas bulaega. Perhaps Gulzar and his poetry are one of the best accomplices and guides to lovers anywhere on earth trying hard to find a discreet, secluded meeting place. In Chaand chura ke laaya hun, chal baithein church ke peeche, the poet nudges the lovers to ignore the crowded hall and front-steps of the church and instead meet behind it where no good god-loving, god-worshipping devotee would have any business to go during a Sunday mass.

While love and romance get a good deal in Gulzar’s songs, melancholy and hopelessness and loneliness and thwarted desires and crushed ambitions (the other commonplace emotions found in the human spectrum) are not too far behind. Do deewane sheher mein can, owing to the test and travails of life, become Ek akela iss sheher mein, raat mein aur dopeher mein, aab-o-daana dhoondta hai, aashiyaana dhoondta hai. In O maajhi re (from the movie Khushboo, 1975), the poet uses the metaphor and the sight of a river bank to speak of the loneliness and defeated desires of a man who finds out that even his immediate world and universe is not under his control. Sad and lost, the man talks to the boatman and seeks his concurrence: Saahilon pe behenewale kabhi suna toh hoga kahin, kaagazon ki kashtiyon ka kahin kinaara hota nahi.

The sights of loneliness in Gulzar’s songs, however, are not always defeatist and melancholic. They are defiant sometimes, and even hopeful, as in Musafir hun yaaron where he combats the traveller’s dearth of company by enlisting Morning and Evening as his friends: Din ne haath thaam kar idhar bithaa liya, raat ne ishaare se udhar bula liya; subah se, shaam se mera dostaana. As for his home, his abode, the traveller sings, Hawa ke paron par mera aashiyaana…

When the elation and its contagious, happy spread at the arrival of a new-born has to be captured, Gulzar rises above banality to use the imagery of forests to tell us of the news: Jungle jungle baat chali hai pata chala hai… which quickly became a childhood anthem for a generation of Indian kids.

The power of Gulzar’s poetry and lyrics is that they move dynamically from concretes to abstract and to concretes again. In one of his best creations, Mera kuch samaan, from the movie Ijaazat (1987), Gulzar breaks all meters and conventions and chooses the format of a free verse to tell the story of a young woman who has just failed in love and wants all her ‘belongings’ back from her estranged lover (R.D. Burman, famously, was stumped upon looking at the lyrics of the song; they were so “free” and so not-verse-like that the legendary composer thought he had been handed a newspaper article to be set to music!). They are not objects of any physical, material value that the young woman wants back; they are her days and nights that she had given to the relationship which she wishes to reclaim. Notice the dynamic movement of the lyrics from concretes (umbrella, getting wet) to abstract (geela mann) to concretes (bed) again to describe a rainy day that was shared by the lovers long ago and is now stranded in time:

ek akeli chhatri mein jab
aadhe aadhe bheeg rahe the
aadhe sookhe, aadhe geele
sukha toh main le aayee thi
geela mann shayad bistar ke paas pada ho
voh bhijwa do, mera voh samaan lauta do…

By combining every-day concretes with abstracts, we get to know more profoundly about the sadness and the sense of loss that the young woman is experiencing. That has been the hallmark of Gulzar. His songs never let you hang mid-air (with lofty abstractions surrounding you) or leave you suffocating on the ground (with reality tightening its grip on you). His songs employ both romanticism and realism to tell a larger truth. They don’t ignore the way we are or how we are. They push us to rise and see what we can become instead — as individuals, as friends, as lovers, as societies, as nations.

Most songs arrive, they are hummed for a while, and then they fade away because they are either too abstract or too material (if not wholly senseless). Gulzar’s songs remain and make a permanent place in hearts, ever-ready to reach to the lips, because they marry the material with the abstract. They use thoughtfully curated sights and spots to add to the point they are making, to show us more than what we are willing to see. They sing from the earth … but their eyes and face are always turned towards the sky, and the skies beyond the sky (as in Aasmaan ke paar shayad aur koi aasmaan hoga).

What, and how much, a man sees and acknowledges reveals a lot about the inner life of the man. Gulzar’s field of vision is wide. His defiance to see beyond the usual, beyond the people in his circle, beyond his immediate environment, and to include in his field of vision and perception trees, breeze, rivers, mountains, a deserted home, a forsaken trail winding down the countryside, a flock of birds … and yes, the moon and the sun and the stars … and many, many other things that we, as a specie, neglect to acknowledge out of our vanity and our incessant focus on ‘the important things in life’, sheds glorious light on the origins of the depth of Gulzar’s artistry.

Feet on the ground, wide-open arms, all-surveying eyes, and an upward glance: that’s how, probably, Gulzar can be seen seeing the world.