If poetry is the distilled essence of life, then Sampooran Singh Kalra—better known as Gulzar—has spent his lifetime bottling this essence into verses that slip effortlessly into the soul.
His words, at once whimsical and weighty, are a confluence of melancholy and mirth, carrying within them a fragrance of longing, much like the petrichor of monsoon.
A poet, lyricist, screenwriter, and director par excellence, Gulzar’s oeuvre is an intricate tapestry woven with threads of nostalgia, love, separation, and an ineffable yearning that transforms the everyday into the extraordinary.
From the silken depths of his poetry to the profound yet unpretentious narratives of his films, Gulzar has been a custodian of emotions, whispering his verses into the ears of generations.
Born on 18 August 1934 in Dina (now in Pakistan), Gulzar's childhood bore the scars of the Partition, a wound that would later seep into his writings with an ineffable poignancy.
Fleeing to India with his family, the young Sampooran Singh found solace in literature, devouring works by Tagore, Ghalib, and Faiz, their poetic cadence imprinting itself upon his soul.
Relinquishing his given name in favour of "Gulzar"—a moniker that aptly translates to "a garden"—he took root in the world of cinema as a lyricist under the aegis of Bimal Roy.
His words in Bandini (1963), particularly Mora Gora Ang Laile, marked the arrival of a poet who could make the simplest emotions sound celestial.
From then on, his lyrics became the lifeblood of Bollywood’s golden era, his pen transforming celluloid dreams into lyrical legacies.
Gulzar’s poetry is a paradox—profound yet playful, contemporary yet timeless.
He does not wield words; he woos them, caressing them into phrases that resonate with the common man and the connoisseur alike.
Gulzar sahab's metaphors are often startling in their ingenuity—comparing loneliness to a crumpled bedsheet, heartbreak to a broken kite, or memories to a suitcase left unpacked.
His verses do not merely speak of love but of its labyrinthine complexities.
Consider his poem Dil Dhoondta Hai, where longing is painted in the hues of mundane nostalgia, or Tere Bina Zindagi Se Koi Shikwa Nahin, where resignation and yearning perform a delicate dance.
Therein lies the Gulzarian magic—words so simple they feel like whispers, yet so profound they echo in eternity.
If Gulzar's poetry is an elegy to emotions, his cinema is its visual symphony.
As a filmmaker, he gravitated towards human stories, eschewing grandeur for poignancy.
Films like Mausam, Ijaazat, and Koshish were woven with a subtlety that Bollywood often sidestepped.
His magnum opus, Ijaazat (1987), remains an unparalleled meditation on love, memory, and the bittersweet cadence of unsaid goodbyes.
Who else but Gulzar could depict heartbreak through the simple metaphor of a letter tucked inside a book?
Or use the haunting refrain of Mera Kuch Samaan—a song so achingly beautiful that it feels less like a melody and more like a piece of one’s soul being sung back to them?
One of Gulzar’s greatest triumphs is his ability to seamlessly straddle the worlds of Urdu and Hindustani.
While the Urdu literati often cherish his ghazals and nazms, the layperson hums his film songs without realising the depth behind their deceptive simplicity.
His language is never ostentatious, nor does it succumb to the banalities of contemporary lyricism.
Instead, it is a delicate embroidery of the poetic and the conversational, the philosophical and the relatable.
In an era where Bollywood lyrics have often descended into the pedestrian, Gulzar remains the last sentinel of a bygone elegance.
Gulzar is not merely a poet or a filmmaker; he is a phenomenon, a custodian of a literary heritage that is fast eroding.
His words are not bound by time but are whispered across generations, nestled in the hearts of those who have loved and lost, of those who have searched for meaning in the ephemeral.
At nearly ninety, he remains an indefatigable creator, his pen still sketching vignettes of life with the same tenderness that marked his earliest works.
Perhaps that is the secret of his immortality—not just in the ink that flows from his pen but in the echoes of his words that live on in the whispers of a lover, in the sighs of a parting, in the solitude of a rainy evening.
For as long as hearts beat and memories linger, Gulzar’s words will continue to breathe—like an old melody carried by the wind, like a poem found in the margins of a forgotten book, like an emotion too deep to be spoken but too powerful to be silenced.