Tag Archives: Gulzar

India: Gulzar to get LitFest Poet Laureate award at Tata Literature Live!

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Veteran lyricist, writer and filmmaker Gulzar has been chosen for this year’s Tata Literature Live! Poet Laureate award, which will be presented to him on November 17 during the 7th edition of the Mumbai LitFest, organisers said. “For a moment, I felt like there might have been a mistake, akin to walking into a dimly lit room, where it takes a moment for your eyes to adjust.”

“It is a great honour to be receiving this award; it gives you a little more confidence and assurance in your work,” the 82-year-old poet, who will be reading a few of his works at the festival, said. He won his first National Film Award in 1972 for ‘Koshish’ and went on to collect a string of accolades and trophies, including an Academy award for the song ‘Jai Ho!’ from the film ‘Slumdog Millionaire’. Read more

Tata Literature Live festival: Talks, performances to feast on from November 17

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Over 130 writers and thinkers like John Gray, Amitav Ghosh, Simon Armitage and former finance minister, P Chidambaram will be a part of the seventh edition of the Tata Literature Live! festival from November 17-20.

The festival will be held at two venues — the NCPA and Prithvi Theatre. Those listed for this edition include Nicholas Shakespeare, literary critic and descendant of William Shakespeare; John Gray, political philosopher and author of False Dawn: The Delusions of Global Capitalism; Ramachandra Guha, Indian historian and Padma Bhushan recipient; Simon Armitage, the sardonically witty British poet, famous for the dramatisation of the Greek epic poem The Odyssey; former minister and writer, Jairam Ramesh, Girish Karnad, Keki Daruwalla, Kiran Nagarkar and Jayant Narlikar, besides Gulzar and Karan Johar. Read more

Punjab has zero literature for children: Gulzar

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gulzarIt is disappointing that Punjabi is ‘zero’ in children literature with nothing available for them in the language, said noted poet, lyricist and film-maker Gulzar on Wednesday.

During his first interaction at Punjab University with students, faculty members and staff after he assumed the Tagore Chair professorship, Gulzar said, “It is a matter of grave concern that we don’t have children literature and we are making no effort to write for them. Writing for children is very difficult. The language used for writing for an eight-year-old will be different from what you use for a 12-year-old.”

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Gulzar on Dubai, literature, friendship

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gulzarA Three-day Theatre Fiesta, written by celebrated Bollywood writer, Gulzar, showcasing the versatility of his writing and dramatised by well-known theatre director Salim Arif will begin from January 15 at DUCTAC, as part of DSF. Using words as mindscapes in poems and songs, Gulzar has the rare ability to redefine the connotation of commonly used expressions and stretch their meanings to new horizons. Be it his short stories, film scripts or songs, Gulzar’s contribution in all these genres in the last fifty years has been prolific and consistent. We caught up with Gulzar over the phone from Mumbai ahead of his visit to Dubai this week.

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Gulzar: Literature should be presented without entertainment

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GulzarIndian literature is very rich and directors should be careful when they adapt them into a film or a TV series. It should not have unnecessary tinge of entertainment, feels poet-lyricist Gulzar.

The 79-year-old director, who is this year’s Dadasaheb Phalke awardee, adapted the works of well-known Indian writers for the big and small screen.

Gulzar said literature can not be reformer, it can only remind or record the past era. Read more

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

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SabaSaba 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. Read more

Book review: the moon and sixpence

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Review of I Swallowed The Moon: The Poetry of Gulzar in The Hindustan Times

GulzarbookSaba Mahmood Bashir, the author of I swallowed the Moon: The poetry of Gulzar, provides the reader a glimpse into the quintessential Gulzar through the pages of her book. The man and his artistic sensibilities are juxtaposed and finely woven together in poetry. He believes that poetry should be in the language of the day, the voice of the people, and Bashir takes us painstakingly and lovingly through that journey of a young boy fleeing with his bhamree tucked into his pyjamas during Partition to the man he is today.

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Book Release: I Swallowed the Moon: The poetry of Gulzar

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Gulzar-DelhiA book on Gulzar’s poetry was released in the presence of the famous poet and Hindi film lyricist himself at Jamia Millia Islamia in New Delhi on October 24, 2013.
The book, I Swallowed The Moon: The Poetry of Gulzar (HarperCollins India), is written by Saba Mahmood Bashir, who teaches at Jamia Millia Islamia as a guest faculty.
The book was first launched at the Bangalore Literary Festival on September 28, 2013 by Gulzar and lyricist Prasoon Joshi. It was followed by a panel discussion on October 24 at Jamia Millia Islamia on the theme, ‘The Poetry of Gulzar’ where the panel consisted of Gulzar, Pavan K Varma, Sukrita Paul Kumar, Prof Asaduddin and Saba Bashir.  
“This book is culled out of my PhD thesis from IIT, Delhi,” Saba told Kitaab. “The book focuses on the poetry of Gulzar, placing him as a Progressive Poet in Popular Culture.”

Wrapped in metaphor

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GulzarRadhika Oberoi reviews Gulzar’s Half a Rupee Stories, translated by Sunjoy Shekhar in The Hindu

A pregnant Hilsa is positioned between the toes of a freshly-bathed Bengali housewife, and deftly sliced for lunch. Its massacre reddens the water of the pan it lies in. Elsewhere in the city, a pregnant woman is gang-raped and bleeds to death.

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