Haider, and gulon mein rang ...

So, I watched Haider. In a movie hall in Connecticut with ten other folks. In time, gulon mein rang bhare streamed through the hall, hummed by a father in the still innocent days of Kashmir, next ringing forth in flashback from a prison - literally, the qafas of the shayr - then hovering like mist over the shikara paddling over Dal as a son searches for his 'disappeared' father, reeling off his mouth incomprehensibly as he tries to grapple with the meaning of his missing father. 

And the seemingly cavernous hall filled up with Faiz's gem.

In an early scene in the movie, Haider's (Shahid Kapoor) father hums the ghazal as the teenage boy hovers around the father asking for pocket money. Jumla complete karo, he demands with a smile, and the son rattles off: chale bhi aao ke gulshan ka karobaar chale.

'Chale bhi aao' sums up Haider's journey thereafter, the elusive search for a father which morphs into a search for identity, a slow descent into a spiral of contradictions, conflict, machinations, madness, until what seemingly is, isn't. Hamletian.

In Haider, the director and co-scriptwriter Vishal Bhardwaj has adapted Shakespeare's Hamlet to the story of Kashmir. It is indeed a bravura adapatation, complete with gravedigger fools, who, in the Shakespearean tradition, are no fools at all. However, to me, the leitmotif of Haider, indeed the work of art that imbues the soul of the film and weaves its narrative is Faiz's gem:

Gulon mein rang bhare baad-e-naubahaar chale
Chale bhi aao ke gulshan ka karobaar chale

The flowers abound with colours, the breeze of new spring blows,
Come, so that the garden transacts its daily business...

The garden of Kashmir stopped transacting its business in the mid 1990s, the time of Haider's setting. A time when the chinar - the majestic trees that define the valley, which derive their name from when the invading Persians first sighted their glorious red, and excalimed, Chinar, meaning, What a fire! - literally and figuratively burst into flames with routine exchange of gunfire between militants and the Indian Army.

Qafas udaas hai yaaron sabaa se kuch to kaho
Kaheen to bahr-e-Khuda aaj zikr-e-yaar chale

The cage is sad, my friends, say something to the breeze,
For God's sake, let's talk about the beloved today...

Poora Kashmir qaid khana hai mere dost, a bitter Haider reflects at a point in the film. As the spiral of violence nosedives, Ghazala, Haider's mother, appeals to her son to surrender, to see reason. For God's sake, let go of the vengeance, let's talk about the beloved... I am so happy to see that a film maker has started this conversation, that a Censor Board - despite the rumoured forty cuts - has passed a film that does not shy from dealing boldly with its troubled and troubling topic. From the reported 50 crore collection, despite a 'Boycott Haider' movement being promoted by some disgruntled right-wingers, the rest of India is joining in the debate. Let's talk about the beloved.

It was inevitable that Haider should take me me back to Maachis, Gulzar saab's film on Sikh militancy in Punjab. Vishal Bhardwaj counts the senior director as his mentor, and it was in Maachis that he got his break as a film director. Besides the music, which for both films is deeply rooted in the folkloric tradition of the respective states, both films are an attempt to unravel the contrarian threads that run through the militant-state conflict narrative. Punjab got over its days of militancy, Kashmir is struggling with it. Is Punjab the better for it? Will Kashmir get to a state of normalcy?

Jo hum pe guzri so guzri magar shab-e-hijraan
Humaare ashq teri aaqbat sanwaar chale

What happened to me, happened, but on the night of separation,
Did my tears make your future better...

If you haven't watched it yet, do yourself a favour, go. Haider deserves you in conversation. And with Faiz and Shakespeare for company, who would quibble? And I am not even bringing up the stellar performances by the cast, Tabu and Shahid Kapoor truly bringing the colours of flowers to life. Gulon mein rang bhare...

Mustard Fields in Singpaore

This article first appeared in Business World

Writing snuck upon me in the guise of a tai tai, a Chinese colloquial term for a woman of leisure. Perched atop a Singapore highrise, I was to take a sabbatical from the life of a corporate road warrior and indulge in some ‘me’ time. And do what expat wives did when their spouses relocated overseas: languorous coffee mornings, salon sessions with girlfriends, retail therapy - the options were beguiling. 

I was on my way to realizing this barmy prospect in sunny Singapore when the plains of Punjab collided with me. Rather, its fields. That grew mustard and wheat and rice and, for a period in the eighties, militants. Which made my little town on the Indo-Pak border a militant hotbed. And images started to swim up, of a time that I had left behind, or so I thought ...

Strapping burly Sardars wrapped in lois - a wool blanket that doubles up as a shawl in the Punjabi countryside - huddled in the lawn of our home, waiting for my father to start work. Or a late-night ringing of the doorbell, my father hurriedly summoned, then disappearing to return at dawn, his face drawn with what even my childish self could fathom was more than just fatigue. Newspapers with redacted text. Black tea served with leftover malai because the milkman’s delivery was interrupted, again, by curfew.  Frequent abrupt school closures. Despite which my vocabulary grew: TADA, separatists, communal ...

I tried to resist. After all, I was jobless - by choice, unburdened by motherhood - daughter yet to arrive, in a shiny first world city - ready to explore!, but the neat white Ikea table in my newly-set-up study drew me in repeatedly. There I’d sit after my husband left for office, with my second cup of tea, and memories that rose unbidden, like the fragrance of raat ki rani, the night blooming jasmine in the garden of our home in Ferozepur. All right, I determined, I would offload those memories onto my PC and be done with them. I was naive. One memory led to another, then another, a labyrinth opening up for me to wade in. That period of my life came back to me with the kind of hi-fidelity reproduction enthusiasts wax about. 

It was the eighties, Khalistan movement was at its peak, Punjab Pulce - as the police is routinely, and with some deprecation, called - was hunting down Sikh militants and notching up its tally of arrests, and men like my father - criminal lawyer by profession, Sikh by faith, Punjabi by nature/upbringing/birth? - got accustomed to being roused by bewildered parents whose sons had been whisked away from homes in the night.

Those strapping Sardars, whose forefathers had changed the course of mighty rivers to transform a scrubland into the fertile Punjab of today, who had fought the marauding hordes of Nadir Shah and Abdali, whose toil fed an entire nation, were left hapless in the face of this new adversity: Encounter deaths.

To make sense of those memories I started asking questions. My research into the Khalistan movement took me back into time and it was the national library, not any salon, that became my haunt. 

The writing of what became my second published book, The Long Walk Home, took me seven years. Meanwhile, I wrote my first, Earning the Laundry Stripes, a tongue-in-cheek look at a woman executive in an all-male corporate world. I emailed a few publishers in India and found one right away. Eventually I found the right home for my first as well. As the first fictional examination of the turbulent 20th century history of Punjab, it was a tough sell but it went on to win praise from Gulzar and Khushwant Singh - say not the struggle naught availeth!

Over twelve years of writing, I have written four novels but cannot afford to pay my bills. What I have is a nest egg from a decade of corporate work and a supportive spouse. But writing is lonely business - its only reward is the writing itself. And writers live on their conviction that yes, one day, their work will yield sufficient cold cash.

Each of my novels has a strong historical narrative woven into the story. I owe it, I guess, to Ferozepur, my town that straddles the Indo-Pak border, Janus-faced. My upcoming thriller, The Hunt for Kohinoor, Book 2 in the Mehrunisa trilogy after the bestselling The Taj Conspiracy, weaves a spy story against the backdrop of contemporary Indo-Pak history of internecine warfare and our shared Mughal history. 

What can I say? When you grow up in a border town, history is in your veins. And as Faulkner said, There is no was.

Manreet Sodhi Someshwar is the author of four novels, including the acclaimed The Long Walk Home and the upcoming thriller The Hunt for Kohinoor

To Stay Relevant Through Changing Times, Cultivate a Dil Jo Bachcha Hai Ji ...

During my summer break in India I had a chance to talk to a class of 18-year-olds. I was there as a writer, talking to them about the writing process via my books. My second novel, The Long Walk Home, is historical fiction. It tells the story of Punjab’s twentieth-century history by refracting it through the life of one ordinary Punjabi gentleman.

That particular period is marked by several turbulent events which, in turn, provided me as a writer with intriguing plot points to wrestle with. The narrative arc begins with pre-partition and comes all the way to the present. However, facing a class of young people, all of them born after 1990, my challenge was how to engage them with my novel considering that by the time they were toddlers Punjab’s last watershed event in the separatist Khalistan movement had been laid to rest.

As I held up the book for them to see, my eyes fell on the back cover and the arabesque whirls and curlicues swam before me. These were from a blurb written by Gulzar for the book. My editor had seen it worthwhile to send the book to the legenday poet, lyricist, film-maker, in the hope that it would connect with him and win the book some advance praise.

I was to get lucky. Gulzar saab liked the book enough to want to write a shayr in its praise. It is his considerable genius that he took four lines to say what took me 400 pages. But, that's another story. Suffice to say that when I heard that he had written a shayr for the book, and would like to speak with the writer, I fair enough fell off my chair. Me? Speak with Gulzar? I stuttered to my editor. And he had mooted the idea?

Panickng, I turned to the one person whose counsel I rely upon when I'm bouncing off walls - hubby. He knew what this meant to me. Ever since he'd got to know me in management school he'd heard me hum, narrate, opine with some Urdu shayr or ghazal and he knew that in the pantheon of poets I revered were two men. It must have been a relief to him that one was dead and long gone, and the other was a living legend, a poet whose Bollywod lyrics the whole family had grown up with.

Hubby was not off the mark - in that commonly understood sense of family, Ghalib and Gulzar had breathed in my household the same air as did we siblings and our parents.

So, that frantic spring morning hubby told me to sit down, take some deep breaths, and write down the conversation I intended to have with Gulzar, blabbering not being an option. I did just that. However, after my nervousness decamped I realized I was speaking with a professional. Gulzar Saab was courteous, said he had liked the book and had written a shayr since, as a poet, that was the way he felt he could justify what he felt for it. However, his concern was whether I'd be okay with an Urdu shayr on the cover of my English novel - would it alienate my English readers?

I was gobsmacked, touched, and infinitely humbled. Here was a man widely regarded as India's greatest living poet and his concern was for how my book would be received by my English readers! When I managed to mumble that it would be my and the readers privilege, he said okay. Thereafter, he oversaw the design of the cover to ensure that the shayr, written in Urdu in his hand, and transliterated below, blended with the overall aesthetic.

That, to my mind, revealed more than anything else can, about a famous person. Humility, truly, is the mark of a genius.

The book was released and won critical acclaim and hit several bestseller lists. In its wake, I got a chance to meet with Gulzar saab. Right before the meeting I was seized with apprehension once again. It was a nebulous fear - what if my ideal was different from my construct of him? Every artist that we admire acquires a flesh and blood persona in our minds - it is spun out of their art that we have consumed, which we use to adorn them with characteristics and qualities we’ve encountered in their work. A gap, therefore, has to exist between what we have created in our imagination and what actually exists.

Gulzar saab had invited me to his beautiful bungalow on Pali Hill. Set back from the road, its sloping roof is nestled in lush greenery. I blogged about that interaction here. Suffice to say that in the first few minutes all my apprehensions slipped away. Gulzar saab is a genuinely warm person with an easy laugh and banter and as we discussed books and writing, I realized I was getting seriously lucky. The chance to meet an artist whose work I admire was translating simultaneously into the happenstance of engaging with an admirable person.

I crowned Gulzar saab my Ustad, the Urdu word to my mind a fitting descriptor for a mentor-cum-Guru.

So, returning to that balmy Bengaluru morning when I was facing forty pairs of curious eyes, I latched onto that flowing Urdu script. Surely, the girls could not be unaware of Gulzar?!

And I started by taking them through the book's synopsis and how it was summed up perfectly by a shayr from Gulzar. Did they know Gulzar, I asked. A round of head nodding, perky eyes, several smiles - but of course! I asked them which Gulzar song they remembered and the offerings ranged from the Osacr-winning Jai Ho to the youth anthem Dhen Te Nen to the lilting melodies of Aandhi and Mausam and – Goli maar bheje mein!

Needless to say, I had wind in my sails thereon!

A few days later I was in Mumbai where I went to meet Gulzar saab again. I narrated the incident and asked him how he had managed to stay so relevant. After all, he had begun his career five decades ago? (The first film for which he penned the lyrics was Kabuliwala in 1961). He gave a short laugh, grinned and said the reason was simple - he was a child at heart!

I sensed it as instinctively correct yet I could not break it down. Besides, my eight-year-old daughter had come along for the visit and Gulzar saab was enquiring about her school and the stuffed tiger she had brought along. Over sugarless tea we chatted about his current work - he is translating Tagore into Hindustani and English, both poetry and a short story collection for children. Many people aren't aware that Gulzar saab’s fondness for Bengali literature inspired him to learn the language. 

I noticed a bust of Ghalib that had not been there during my previous visit. Gulzar saab mentioned that he had commissioned a sculptor from Sholapur to make a bust for Ghalib's home in Ballimaran in Chandni Chowk area of old Delhi. He has been at the forefront of a group of people engaged in attempting to free the old haveli of encroachers. Last year the bust was installed in Ghalib’s home which now houses a museum. Pleased with the result he’d requested another for his home.

I suggested I'd like a picture of him beside Ghalib but he said no, let it be of all three of us. So my daughter clicked a picture of me in the company of my two maestros.

Gulzar saab gifted my daughter a Buddha figurine and suggested she keep it on her study table where it would bless her. I updated him on my next book and its expected release in December. As Gulzar saab rummaged in his study for some book that he could gift Malvika we sighted a cushion in one corner where a dog was nestled. It was Pali, Gulzar saab's pug which had passed away. Pali was his faithful companion and that was where he bided his time as his master wrote at his desk daily. Now Pali's spirit was still in the study as the bronze cast of him snuggled in one corner.

Malvika was touched by the story - she loves all animals, above all dogs. It was time to say our byes. We petted Kalia, Gulzar saab’s other dog, and once outside, I asked my daughter if she had got bored. No, she shrugged, as she clutched the Buddha figurine and an aromatic candle she had got as gifts, I had a good time.

Well, I'd had a good time too. Come to think of it, I have always had a good time with Gulzar saab’s poetry… Be it Tere bina zindagi se koi shikwa to nahin, which had me scratching my head when I first heard it as a pre-teen; Tujh se naraaz nahin zindagi hairaan hun main, which has been like a balm in the face of life’s knocks; Jungle jungle pata chala hai, chaddi pahan ke phul khila hai, which makes me grin ear-to-ear even today; Kajra re, to which I’ve oft danced with my daughter; the lilting Dil to bachcha jai ji; the TV serial Mirza Ghalib which ensconced me into the fold of Ghalib; the wonderfully nuanced sketches of human relationships in Aandhi, Mausam, Masoom, Ijazat …

In the preamble to a song – Dil dhoondta hai phir wahi – from his film Mausam, Gulzar saab says: 

misra Ghalib ka hai, 

aur kaifiyat apni apni

The couplet is by Ghalib, and

each listener brings to it his own

Albeit a very prosaic translation but the essence is evident. And that, I think, is the reason Gulzar saab has stayed relevant through changing times – his poetry, that subliminal distillation of life’s experiences, speaks to each one of us.

Sach to yeh hai ki, geet Gulzar ka hai aur kaifiyat apni apni … 

On that note, a very happy birthday Gulzar saab!

Tum ko zindagi peeney ki aadat hai!

The Economic Times of July 15, 2009 went against its grain, devoting an entire editorial to a Hindi film ballad. Titled “Bollywood bounce in slowdown times”, it gushed about a song that it said “captures the Indian spirit wonderfully”. The number it waxed about was “Dhen Te Nen” from Vishal Bhardwaj’s forthcoming film Kaminey. The song - boisterous, pacy, ebullient – which takes Bollywood’s signature tune that we all grew up with – dhen te nen – and vocalizes it into a spirited song emblematic of youth is penned by a 72-year-old Padma Bhushan awardee, Gulzar.

Coincidentally, July 15 was also the date when I had an appointment to meet Gulzar saab. Early this year, my publisher HarperCollins had sent my book The Long Walk Home to him for a possible blurb. I was to get lucky. Not only did he like the manuscript, he wrote a shayr in its praise. The same is carried on the back cover of The Long Walk Home, with a short quote in English on the front cover.

For me, Gulzar saab’s endorsement held a special significance. Like any Indian of my generation, I have grown up on the myriad offerings of this creative genius. In addition, he had impinged on my consciousness at the age of eight when I was dragged to watch Mausam. Thereafter, my sister gushed endlessly about the movie – I suspect she became a doctor inspired by Sanjeev Kumar’s Dr. Gill of the film – while I came away with a sense of something beautiful yet incomprehensible. I was to experience the same when Aandhi burst upon our household and ‘Tere bina zindagi se koi’ played repeatedly, confounding me with its sense of simultaneous acceptance and exception. As I grew older, the apparent paradox in Gulzar saab’s poetry, the turning on its head of a known idea – witness ‘hamne dekhi hain in aankhon ki mahaketi khushboo; havaaon pe likh do havaaon ke naam; is mod se jaate hain; silii havva chhoo gayi, silla badan chhil gaya’ – started to reveal itself and I was touched by its magic.

Then was to come Mirza Ghalib, the TV serial scripted and directed by Gulzar that made ghazals dance in my veins. I had grown up in a home where Urdu poetry resonated through mauseeki and shayari programmes telecast by neighbouring PTV (Pakistan TV’s reception in our border town in the seventies was superior to that of Amritsar DD). However, it was Gulzar’s wand that brought Mirza Asadullah Khan Ghalib strolling through our home: the aristocrat in his peaked hat and long robes, the lover of wine and luscious mangoes, the consummate poet who could weave a shayr on anything under the sun. Yeh masaail-e-tasawuf, yeh tera bayaan Ghalib (Your deliberations on the mystical, your inimitable proclamations Ghalib) – to the latent writer in me, it opened a world where words formed the conjuror’s tool. Today, my 70-year-old aunt and my 7-year-old daughter both rock to ‘beedi jalayi le jigar se piya’, and I – like the rest of my countrymen – continue to be in his thrall!

But coming back to that fateful morning. Mumbai had been pouring for 36 hours, the morning’s Times of India carried a front-page picture of a boat on the flooded Milan subway, which made my daughter Malvika query: “You didn’t tell me there is a river in Mumbai!” Additionally, Malvika had been throwing up since the middle of the previous night. The doctor’s diagnosis was food poisoning and she was one Domstal up and, like any child, was ravenous precisely when food was not permitted for several hours. What compounded matters further was that we were in Nariman Point and I had to travel to Bandra for my appointment. It did appear that morning as if the elements were colluding to ensure I miss my meeting.

But then Indra took a break, Malvika was able to digest water – which meant I could leave her at my friend Vrinda’s place for a few hours, and we could sally forth towards Pali Hill. I had asked Vrinda to accompany me – what if I lost my tongue or garbled it in the presence of the legendary writer, and needed saving? It helped matters that she was as keen to meet him as I; okay, a wee bit less since I regard myself as the primary fan! Vrinda and I reached Boskyana in good time and were ushered to the portico where we were taking off our footwear when Vrinda glared at my toenails and hissed, “Why are you wearing such bright nail polish?” I groaned.

The next instant we found ourselves in a cool, shaded living room which, as we took our seats on the sofa, we figured was L-shaped. In the short leg of the L, at a table piled high with books sat Gulzar saab, writing. A minute later he walked up to us, dressed in his trademark white kurta pajama wearing a warm smile. Gulzar saab is a man of immense presence. However, as he greeted us warmly, my nervousness evaporated. In its place was happiness, joy at sharing space with a man whom I hold in profound respect, who greeted us warmly and was offering us tea. As he got up to speak with his assistant, Vrinda – who had been silent thus far – whispered, “He is overwhelming.”

Gulzar saab is a man who wears his aura lightly. He had generous words of praise for The Long Walk Home, and he divulged his experience of Partition and his family's move to Delhi in its aftermath. For those who might not be aware, he was born in Dina, Pakistan, in a Sikh family. His father was a trader but Gulzar saab took to writing as a way to exorcise the demons of Partition.

Before long we were discussing writing and the time and discipline it commands. When I remarked that I had only 4 hours to write before my daughter returned from school, he shared his own experience with his daughter Bosky. As the primary caregiver till she was twelve, Gulzar saab said he knew what it was like to plait your daughter’s hair and tie her shoelaces and drop her to school. I sat there soaking it all in. I see myself as a full-time writer and a full-time mother – the nature of both is such that neither decamps, there is no furlough from either. Perhaps because my writing career is as old as my daughter’s age, I also regard both the vocations as similar – you learn on the job, the learning is constant, and just as one does not raise a child to be a great parent, one does not write to be a great writer – in both, the joy is in the act.

Gulzar saab encapsulated my thoughts and feelings beautifully when he limned his philosophy as a parent. “Never assume that you know more than your child,” he said. “If your child is two-year-old then you are a two-year-old parent – you are both learning.” How amazing! I rogered it there and then. As a parent there are numerous occasions when I feel, Shucks! I should have known better. Next time, keeping Gulzar saab’s wisdom in mind, I shall be less harsh on myself, and Malvika and I will get a laugh out of whatever situation it is that requires me to be the omniscient parent – who then falls flat!

Over the course of one hour we discussed movies and songs and the evolution of languages, and through it all Gulzar saab was a great companion. He is a fascinating conversationalist, with a trove of anecdotes, a sense of humour and a delightful wit. He surprised Vrinda and me by giving us the gift of some of his books, and I requested him to autograph my copy of The Long Walk Home – his inscription will always be my beacon. Before we wound up, I requested him for a photograph. Gulzar saab, the amiable host, turned up the lights. As I stood next to him, holding the book in my hand, he clasped his right hand firmly over mine, blessing both the book and the writer.

It is not everyday that one gets to meet one’s idol. And rarer still to discover that the legend is a person of warmth, humility and infinite grace. I am honoured to have had the privilege of his company. He is my inspiration for writing more.

What do I wish for him? To avoid the trap of chhota munh aur badi baat, I shall wish for Gulzar saab by borrowing his lovely lyrics from the recent Allianz Bajaj commercial: Jiyo har lamha, tum ko zindagi peene ki aadat hai!

Dhen Te Nen!