Gulzar (born Sampooran Singh Kalra, 18 August 1934) is an Indian poet, lyricist, screenwriter and film director. He has written film songs for more than sixty years, from “Mora gora ang lai le” in 1963 to “Jai Ho”, for which he shared an Academy Award in 2009, and is as popular with the young today as he was with their grandparents. As a director he made some of the most thoughtful Hindi films of the 1970s and 1980s. He writes poetry and fiction in Urdu and received the Jnanpith Award for 2023.
Quick Facts
| Birth name | Sampooran Singh Kalra |
| Born | 18 August 1934, Dina, Jhelum district, Punjab (now in Pakistan) |
| Age | 92 |
| Languages | Urdu, Hindi, Punjabi |
| Occupation | Poet, lyricist, screenwriter, film director |
| Years active | 1961–present |
| Films as director | Mere Apne, Parichay, Koshish, Aandhi, Mausam, Angoor, Ijaazat, Lekin, Maachis |
| Awards | Padma Bhushan (2004), Sahitya Akademi Award (2002), Academy Award (2009), Grammy Award (2010), Dadasaheb Phalke Award (2013), Jnanpith Award (2023) |
| Spouse | Raakhee (m. 1973) |
| Children | Meghna Gulzar |
Early Life
He was born at Dina, a small town in western Punjab, into a Sikh family of traders. His mother died when he was an infant. The family moved to Delhi, and at Partition, when he was thirteen, he saw the killing in the streets; the memory has returned in his poems and stories all his life.
His father had no use for poetry. He was sent to an elder brother in Bombay and worked in a motor garage, mixing paints to touch up cars damaged in accidents, a job that left him time to read. He joined the progressive writers’ circle and took the pen name Gulzar, “garden”.
Into Films
The lyricist Shailendra introduced him to Bimal Roy, who was making Bandini. The composer S. D. Burman had quarrelled with the film’s lyricist, and the young man was asked to write one song: “Mora gora ang lai le” (1963). Roy took him on as an assistant. He then worked as a writer with Hrishikesh Mukherjee, for whom he wrote the dialogue of Anand and the scripts of Guddi and Namak Haraam.
Director
He directed his first film, Mere Apne, in 1971.
- Parichay and Koshish (1972), the second about a deaf couple
- Aandhi (1975), about a woman politician and the husband she left; it was withdrawn from cinemas for a time during the Emergency because the heroine was thought to resemble the Prime Minister
- Mausam (1975), Kinara, Kitaab and Namkeen
- Angoor (1982), a comedy from Shakespeare
- Ijaazat (1987) and Lekin (1990)
- Maachis (1996), on the making of militants in Punjab
- for television, the serial Mirza Ghalib (1988); see Mirza Ghalib
His films are about relationships and their aftermath, often told in flashback. Sanjeev Kumar was his favourite actor.
Lyricist
His closest collaborator was the composer R. D. Burman, with whom he made the songs of Aandhi, Khushboo, Ghar, Masoom and Ijaazat. Burman complained that he was being asked to set a newspaper to music; “Mera kuch saamaan tumhare paas pada hai”, a song without rhyme or metre, was the result.
He went on to work with each new generation of composers, above all Vishal Bhardwaj and A. R. Rahman: “Chappa chappa charkha chale”, “Chaiyya chaiyya”, “Kajra re”, “Beedi jalaile”, “Dil to bachcha hai ji”. “Jai Ho”, from Slumdog Millionaire, won the Academy Award for Best Original Song and a Grammy.
His images are his signature: the moon as a coin or a piece of bread, eyes that smell fragrant, a night tied in a knot. He has written many songs for children, including the title song of the Hindi television version of The Jungle Book.
Writer
He has published many volumes of Urdu and Hindi poetry and invented a three-line verse form he calls the triveni. His short stories were collected as Raavi Paar and Dhuan, the latter winning the Sahitya Akademi Award for Urdu in 2002. He has translated Rabindranath Tagore and many contemporary Indian poets into Hindustani.
Honours
- Five National Film Awards and more than twenty Filmfare Awards
- Padma Bhushan (2004)
- Dadasaheb Phalke Award for 2013
- Jnanpith Award for 2023
Personal Life
He married the actress Raakhee in 1973. They separated within a few years but never divorced and remain on close terms. Their daughter, Meghna Gulzar, is a film director; her childhood name gave him the title of his home, Boskyana. He is always seen in a white kurta.
He belongs to a line of poet-lyricists that includes Sahir Ludhianvi.
Featured image: Gulzar in March 2008. Photo by Bollywood Hungama, licensed under CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
