At 90, the master poet-lyricist Gulzar’s legacy is etched in history. I first listened to Gulzar’s poetry in an audio cassette over 30 years ago. The album Fursat Ke Raat Din is a compilation of his film songs interspersed with his poetry. The first song in it, RD Burman’s Phir se aaiyo badra bidesi (Namkeen), was preceded by a poem that spoke of ‘the birth of a song’. There must have been something about the moment that triggered a lifelong love for the poetry of Gulzar.
Sometime later, I attended a book launch at AIFACS Hall—Rina Singh’s translation of Gulzar’s poems, titled Silences. This marked my introduction to his poetry and imprinted on my mind the vision of a poet who dealt in silences. Over the years, in my career as an editor, I have worked on and published a number of volumes of his poetry, short stories and translations, as well as his only work as a novelist, Do Log. Yet, that audiocassette and silences hold a special place even thirty years later.
It’s a foolhardy exercise to attempt to select five representative favourites from his huge oeuvre—his recently collected volume Baal-o-Paar runs a humongous 1200-plus pages and does not include a few volumes. But then whoever says that poetry has anything to do with being sensible. So, here goes—five Gulzar poems that introduced me to his work, that remain favourites and also provide a glimpse of some of the themes his poems address. Not surprisingly, almost all of them were part of Silences.
Before I list the poems and why they resonate so much with me, here are a couple of disclaimers; The lack of space prevents me from carrying the poems or their translations in full. Also, I refrain from any analysis – these are purely my emotional responses to these poems distilled through time. That decision has its origins in Gulzar’s poem Nazm ki tazziyakarte karte (In Analysing the Poem) where he likens analysing poetry to stripping a rose of both its essence and its fragrance, so that the poem now clatters like an empty vessel.
Saleeb/Crucifix
This long poem (88 lines) is based on The Misunderstanding, the prologue to Arthur Koestler’s book The Call-Girls. Gulzar employs vivid imagery to chart Christ’s journey carrying the cross. The Son’s interior monologue with the Father also highlights elements of the poet’s lifelong scepticism about God. When Christ implores God, who has moved mountains with His breath, to move the pebble under his feet, and then resigns himself to inaction on the part of God, you realise with a shudder the sheer futility of faith. Heart-breaking.
Wo jo shayar tha/The Poet
Gulzar has addressed the themes of poetry—a poet’s agony and death—time and again. None better than the one where he speaks of a poet who dealt in silences and spoke in riddles, ‘a strange’ poet who would wake up in the night and rise on his elbows to kiss the moon (another of Gulzar’s obsession as he insists on not only holding a copyright on the moon but also swallowing it whole in the celebrated song Namak ishq ka. And then the punchline about the poet having departed that startles you with its suddenness.
Wo jo shayar tha/The Poet
Gulzar has addressed the themes of poetry—a poet’s agony and death—time and again. None better than the one where he speaks of a poet who dealt in silences and spoke in riddles, ‘a strange’ poet who would wake up in the night and rise on his elbows to kiss the moon (another of Gulzar’s obsession as he insists on not only holding a copyright on the moon but also swallowing it whole in the celebrated song Namak ishq ka. And then the punchline about the poet having departed that startles you with its suddenness.
Modh/Crossings
Many fans of Gulzar’s film songs will be aware of the song in the film Aandhi called Is modh se jaate hai. This poem reproduces the first two lines of the song but what makes the poem special is the way Gulzar conveys the spirit of a lover waiting at the crossroads for the beloved, convinced that a day will come when the latter will arrive at the crossing and pause to take the lover by the hand and show him the way.
Seelan/Dampness
No one speaks of the plangent sound of rainfall as evocatively as Gulzar does in this poem. As he says, Bas ek hi sur mein, ek hi lay pe, subah se dekh, dekh kaise baras raha hain udaas paani, the mind’s eye conjures the image vividly—the monotonic and melancholic rhythm and melody of the rain. Who else but Gulzar could think of describing it as udaas paani? And he goes one better, personifying thoughts and memories, which too are soaked—the rains having rendered even thoughts sodden, from which memories keep dripping.
Kitabein / Books
There isn’t an ode to books and the joy of reading better than this. Gulzar gives voice to our increasingly fragile relationship with books in the digital age. In his words, the very act of turning a page, replaced by a click of the mouse, now elicits a sob as the printed words begin to lose their meanings. And the way he invokes the forging of relationships in the act of exchanging books (finding dried flowers tucked away in them), now forever lost. Holding a book never felt this romantic.