Yeh Gul(zar)istan Hamara, Films of Gulzar Options

[swarapriya]

Yeh Gul(zar)istan Hamara - Films of Gulzar

Sampooran Singh Karla, popularly known as Gulzar, has been active for 50 years in the film industry. At age 73, after winning an Oscar in 2009 he seems to be going from strength to strength and hardly shows any signs of slowing down.

Originally a car mechanic, Karla always wanted to be a writer. He took the penname of Gulzar Deenvi and started writing. His first opportunity to write for films came in 1960.

He entered into the movies as an assistant director and song writer for the film “Shreeman Satyawadi”. After that ambitious start, he has been involved in writing dialogues, lyrics, stories, screenplays, producing, and directing movies for all these years.

During his brilliant career he garnered several awards. Aside for the Oscar for “Slumdog Millionaire” for the song “Jai Ho”, he also won a Grammy for the same song. He won the best lyricist Filmfare award a record 11 times. He also won the Filmfare award as the best dialogue writer four times, best story once, and best director once. He won seven National film awards in various categories. He is a recipient of Sahitya Akademi Award and the Padma Bhushan.

During his illustrious career Gulzar collaborated with various artistes, including Asha Bhosle, Bhupinder Singh, Ghulam Ali, Jagjit Singh, and R.D. Burman, and came out with several private albums. He invented a new technique of writing poetry called “Triveni” that contains each stanza as rhyming three lines. The album with Jagjit Singh, “Koi Baat Chale”, was written completely using this technique.

He also made his presence felt on TV by making a series on the life of “Ghalib”. He wrote songs for many children movies for TV. He directed 21 movies and was involved in some capacity or other in over 140 movies. In the next few weeks, I would like to share songs from the films he was associated with.

For showing continued brilliance for 50 or so years one cannot help but be in just awe of his unending creative juices. All one can say about him and his magnificently illustrious career, borrowing from his now world famous song, “Jai Ho!” …

This post has been edited by swarapriya: Mar 5 2010, 02:51 AM

[swarapriya]

Anubhav (1971)

The songs of “Anubhav”, meaning experience, have to be experienced to enjoy them. Geetaji was trying to put together order into her life after the tragic ending of her marriage to Guru Dutt who died leaving her life in shambles and complete disarray. She has to overcome her grief, raise three young children, and pay off debts. Any one of these could be unbearable burden for a common person, but Geetaji was no common person. She was an extraordinarily uncommon person, bestowed with mellifluously honeyed voice that swayed millions for decades. She has the will, determination and still a lot of fight left in her. She put together all of this to give one last try to sing these songs. And she did come through this very magnificently. The quiver in her voice was back. The lilt in her voice was back. The melancholy mixed with mesmerizingly musical magic that distinguished her voice was once again back.

Even her worst critics couldn’t believe that Geetaji could go back to her old form in singing the songs of this film. In her expressive voice these songs sprung to life. It gave her admirers so much hope for better things to come. Unfortunately, these songs, considered to be some of the best she sang, turned out to be her swan song. The very next year, basking in the glory of the success of the songs with which she was able to successfully recapture the magic, she finally succumbed to bad health. Geetaji was no more. But she lives forever in our hearts and our minds …

[parag_sankla]

Anubhav (1971)

The songs of “Anubhav”, meaning experience, have to be experienced to enjoy them. Geetaji was trying to put together order into her life after the tragic ending of her marriage to Guru Dutt who died leaving her life in shambles and complete disarray. She has to overcome her grief, raise three young children, and pay off debts. Any one of these could be unbearable burden for a common person, but Geetaji was no common person. She was an extraordinarily uncommon person, bestowed with mellifluously honeyed voice that swayed millions for decades. She has the will, determination and still a lot of fight left in her. She put together all of this to give one last try to sing these songs. And she did come through this very magnificently. The quiver in her voice was back. The lilt in her voice was back. The melancholy mixed with mesmerizingly musical magic that distinguished her voice was once again back.

Even her worst critics couldn’t believe that Geetaji could go back to her old form in singing the songs of this film. In her expressive voice these songs sprung to life. It gave her admirers so much hope for better things to come. Unfortunately, these songs, considered to be some of the best she sang, turned out to be her swan song. The very next year, basking in the glory of the success of the songs with which she was able to successfully recapture the magic, she finally succumbed to bad health. Geetaji was no more. But she lives forever in our hearts and our minds …

Swarapriya

Heart-felt thanks for such a wonderful write-up on of the most melodious musical scores of the seventies. As you rightly mentioned, all the four songs of Anubhav have to be experienced/felt to truly appreciate them. It was actually a low budget art film for which the producer used Tanuja's own flat for most of the shooting. The producers could not afford more expensive composers and hence went back to Kanu Roy who had given haunting music for Uski Kahani a few years earlier. In place of seasoned lyricist Kaifi sahab, came in relative newcomer Gulzar and Kapil Kumar. (No information is available on the net about the second lyricist who wrote such soothing and poignant songs for this film.) By this time, making films in color had become a norm, yet this film was made in black and white, obviously due to the financial constraints.

Geeta ji was trying her hand at acting ("Badhu Baran" released in 1967), composing music (by nick name Pyaasi, she was supposed to compose music for a film), doing stage shows and cutting Pooja records in Bengali during the late sixties and early seventies. Kanu Roy once again trusted the voice of Geeta ji and gave her all the three solos for this film. (Till date, many music lovers have this mis-concept that Kanu Roy is Geeta ji's brother and that is why he had her sing these songs. The fact is that Kanu Roy is not related to Geeta ji at all). She poured her heart in these songs and made them memorable. The softness, the sweetness, the pain, the whispering, the laughter, the smile, the hope..all are so evident in her voice. She did not mean to, but did prove that she still had it in her, given an opportunity. Kanu Roy made minimum use of orchestration (partly forced due to financial constraints) yet created four memorable songs, his lifetime best. Manna da sounded so soft and so touching in the song "Phir kahi koi phool khilaa". His voice had that dreamy quality to carry off the unconventional lyrics of that song.

Hats off to Gulzar sahab, Geeta ji , Manna da and the unsung genius of Kapil Kumar and Kanu Roy for giving us such memorable songs to cherish forever.