Darvesh, Khanabadosh, Harfanmaula: A Gifted Poet’s Oeuvre on a Large Canvas

Gulzar Sa’ab, as he is respectfully and fondly called, is a gifted poet and storyteller whose vast oeuvre as script and song writer for Hindi cinema over half a century has made him a stalwart of the Bombay film industry. Besides the innumerable national level awards, including the prestigious Dada Saheb Phalke Award, he received the Oscar and the Grammy for the song ‘Jai Ho’ for the film Slumdog Millionaire in 2008 and 2010 respectively. The formal recognition via the Padma Bhushan had happened in 2004. However, he is more than the sum of these parts. To see that he has captured the imagination of generations of those with access to Hindi cinema or its music, in lyrics and films of a great range and sensitivity, one needs to merely turn to neighbourhoods and living rooms. Biographer Yatindra Mishra’s Hindustani vocabulary suggests a larger canvas—darvesh, khanabadosh, harfanmaula— words hard to translate into an English which seems anaemic and alien for the lush emotional landscape this book constructs and charts. We see a philosophical, nomadic, playful, expansively creative spirit drinking deep from the subcontinent’s palimpsestic culture and skillfully transmuting and transmitting it into forms that appeal to the popular imagination.