Saba Mahmood Bashir: Gulzar is a poet who bridges the popular with the literary

Saba Mahmood Bashir is a freelance editor based in Delhi. She is a gold medallist in MA, English Literature from Allahabad University and has completed her PhD from IIT Delhi. Her first book, Memory-Past, a collection of poems, was published by Writers Workshop in 2006.

Her latest book is I Swallowed the Moon: The poetry of Gulzar (HarperCollins India, 2013). The book focuses on the poetry of Hindi film lyricist and poet Gulzar, placing him as a Progressive Poet in Popular Culture.

Kitaab recently interviewed Saba through e-mail:

Your book on Gulzar is based on your PhD thesis. Why did you zero in on Gulzar as a topic of your research?

This is a question which has often been asked. Honestly, there is no specific answer for the same. I was always intrigued with the imagery and the way Gulzar saheb weaves his words in his writings. I have been reading his poetry, and listening to the songs written by him ever since I was child, and could always feel a distinct difference in his writings and that of his contemporaries. It was just that parallel that I could see between his writings, that I wished to analyse and dot the connecting points in his poetry.