Enkayaar, Bollywood Trade News Network

Though he entered into mid-seventies in his life last wee, and has entered into his seventy fifth year, Gulzar's songs still rule the roost whenever he picks up the pen. It is also rare that when Gulzar pens a song he does not get recognized in the form of a multitude of awards. The testimony for the same is in the form of “Kajrare from BUNTY AUR BABLI and Beedi Jalaile from OMKARA. For a man to be able to capture the heart of the youth of today with such peppy songs, it indeed is a treat to experience his thoughts whenever he pens them either in the form of a verse or a story. It is now more in the form of a story, as after HU TU TU Gulzar has not wielded the megaphone.

It was to the credit of Gulzar that through his baritone voice he was able to unravel the enigma of a poet called Mirza Ghalib and made a whole nation look back and have a renewed interest in Ghalib.

It is a long journey that Gulzar has traveled from the time when he wrote his first song in 1963, BANDINI " Mora gora rang laile", under the baton of Sachin Dev Burman, which was a song that was seeped purely in Hindi lyrics to Bidi Jalaile which is an admixture of colloquial, to street language to Urdu, Gulzar has indeed blossomed in the real sense of the word. If his career as a lyricist were to be seen, it would be found that he either wrote lyrics for Sachin Dev Burman or R D Burman, and in rare of cases for other music directors, as far as Hindi film music is concerned.

Were it not for Gulzar, most of us may not have got the taste of rural Punjab through his lyrics which became his hallmark after MAACHIS and most of his lyrics have been interspersed with one or the other nuance of rural Punjab, and is probably an indication of his yearn to be a part of the rural Punjab. Be it the usage of the Punjabi term for jaggery, or the sweet taste of sugarcane, the earthiness that characterizes lyrics of Gulzar is a manifestation of his upbringing in the hinterland of Punjab. He was probably the first lyricist who captured the joy one experiences when the first drop of water falls on the earth in the most succinct manner, and he was able to do it as he could bring it out by choosing mixture of worlds from Urdu, Hindi and Punjabi.

Here is a lyricist who has redefined the manner in which the songs are written in Hindi films and his lyrics have the charm to sweep off young and old alike. He is also one of the few lyricists who recite his lyrics in an enthralling manner. His latest offering along with A R Rehman in YUVA would therefore be watched eagerly, as it would be for the first time that Gulzar is writing lyrics for a Salman Khan film. Salman Khan so far had not got an occasion to croon to lyrics of Gulzar and the songs that he has enacted upon have created an image, which Gulzar's song may be able to break through YUVA.


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