Gulzar celebrates the city that welcomed him as a teenager in new book ‘Aamchi Mumbai’

On one of those early monsoon days when the heavens seem to have opened up, I find myself in a cab winding up Bandra’s Pali Hill. Through the grey haze and incessant, thick din of the downpour that defines the city at this time of the year, we stop at an unshowy white bungalow from another era. I am here to meet someone who started off almost as a castaway 76 years ago, a migrant like countless others in a city that has since given him everything and that he has now called home for decades.  

Gulzar (born in 1934 in Dina, present-day Pakistan), beloved poet, writer, filmmaker and lyricist in Hindi films, has brought out a new collection of poems and short stories from the 1980s, titled Aamchi Mumbai (My Mumbai). The anthology (translated by Rakhshanda Jalil; published by HarperCollins) is as open and tactile, as reminiscent of the salt-flecked sea air of Mumbai and as heterogenous, as the city’s capacious and chaotic heart.   

At times in the conversation, we might have come precariously close to invoking the typical clichés of a dream city but of course we don’t. Gulzar’s disarmingly accessible writing masks the way in which the poetic and writerly self remains grounded in the canny outsider’s persona with a natural distance from his material.  And then there is the play of languages whose often alien idioms and rhythms might draw from North India, Urdu, his native Punjabi, and his fascination with Bangla, but are uniquely alchemised in his writing and concerns as a Mumbaikar in the here and now.  

Writing Mumbai

In the first of his striking series of Mumbai poems, Gulzar describes the city as a long fish lying in the water. Later, he compares the city by night to a black cat, with her claws tucked into her belly. In another poem, wryly titled ‘It is probably a city of advertisements’, he acknowledges that the city is driven by a constant ubiquitous marketing hype and the anxiety to sell itself. 

As the anthology progresses, Aamchi Mumbai makes way for darker and more unsettling themes: Whenever a strong wind blows in this city, my friend a few nests fall from the branches… picking every scrap and fragment of dream and attempting to stick them back together. Some dreams remain sobbing and sighing but some die… 

The stories are almost invariably written in the first person, a device that allows Gulzar to experiment with storytelling while capturing Mumbai’s tense energy and many contradictions. His portrait of the clarinet player Firoze and recollections of working with the legendary filmmaker and mentor Bimal Roy, as he raced against death to film Amrito Kumbher Sandhaney (1982), a Samaresh Basu novel, are truly memorable. 

A perfect springboard 

These are the impressions I carry with me into the interview at any rate. Looking for an opening, I venture to suggest that Gulzar came back to literature around 2000, after his film career of nearly four decades was winding down. This was when the producer of political thriller Hu Tu Tu (1999) had taken away his last film as a director, editing it afresh and applying for a new censor certificate. 

But it turns out that this is not a good start at all. Polite disapproval, if not open contradiction, appears on Gulzar’s face before he explains, “I have always been with books and literature. I never left literature so there’s no question of coming back. Films happened somewhere in the middle, settled me, gave me stability but it was always books and writing for me.”  

He adds, “Even when I joined films, I worked with Bimal Roy whose Hindi films drew mainly from Bangla literature.” Indeed, Roy’s best cinema drew from literature and included Sujata (1959), based on a short story by Subodh Ghosh, and Bandini (1963), based on a short story by Charu Chandra Chakraborty (pen name Jarasandha). Earlier, the classic Do Bigha Zamin in 1953 was inspired by a poem by the same name, by Rabindranath Tagore, with screenplay and music by Salil Chowdhury. Devdas in 1955 was based on a novel by the same name by Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay.  

In 1962, Bimal Roy was looking for a lyricist for a Vaishnav song for Bandini. Roy had had a disagreement with legendary lyricist Shailendra when his assistant director, Debu Sen, urged his roommate Gulzar to give it a go. But the bookish young man wedded to literature was not keen to work in films. It was only when Shailendra, who Gulzar had met at Youth Choir meetings in Mumbai, reprimanded him for letting such an opportunity go that he agreed. The exquisite song ’Mora Gora Ang Lai Le’ was his first foray into the film industry. The young poet was quite prepared to go back to his garage mechanic day job when Roy, clearly impressed by the intense youngster, invited him to join his production house as an assistant director.  

But it is in recalling his relationship with the city that he now calls home that Gulzar becomes truly animated. For the next two hours, he shares stories that reveal what makes Mumbai so unique while also offering clues about how the country has changed since Independence.  

Tough love and camaraderie

“This city is like an elder brother. It keeps you close, handles things for you with the occasional box on the ears but it doesn’t let you go,” Gulzar declares.  

Soon after he had received admission to St. Stephens College in Delhi, a 16-year-old Gulzar was given a one-way train ticket to Mumbai by family members and told to alight only once the destination arrived. From there, life unfolded as it has for many a migrant in the city. He lived in a sparse chawl opposite KEM Hospital in Dadar, the heart of Mumbai.

His first encounter was with Irani restaurants and their unique subculture of a rough and ready friendliness. A memory that has stayed is of how convenient it was to survive on a meal of keema pav (minced meat with bun) for 25 paise. In a city that lacked public taps (piaus — a common sight in North India), Irani restaurants used to keep large trays filled with water. Anyone passing by could step inside and get a glass. At night, the same eateries would keep two vessels full of leftover Irani biryani for anyone looking for a free meal. 

He recalls a city dotted with fishing villages and palm fronds, and the famous ‘aunty bars’ that brewed liquor for a few trusted clients only. He harks back to a city of a disappearing civility and an age when buses were rarely overcrowded and conductors usually stepped in to disallow the mad rush of commuters. “They used to ask people to wait for the next bus,” he recalls.

Today, Mumbai presents itself as a sharp-edged neo-liberal fantasy. Back then, it was also a city of creative ferment with a strong working-class movement. “You could get a copy of Tolstoy’s Resurrection for 50 paise,” Gulzar recalls with wonder. This city of uneven social dynamics gave it an air of multiple possibilities even in the midst of daily struggles. Lyricist Shailendra, who infused Hindi film songs with a natural empathy for the common man, worked at the Matunga railway yard. 

Like many literature lovers, Gulzar’s early years in the city were spent attending poetry readings and talks by stalwarts of the Progressive Writers Group at Red Flag Hall in Khetwadi in the then culturally vibrant Girgaum area, where Rajinder Singh Bedi, Ali Sardar Jafri, Sahir Ludhianvi and many others gathered to read and mingle with ordinary people interested in literature. 

But the city’s once-strong working-class leanings have changed. “Political rallies were common and you had leaders like Comrade S.A. Dange, a stocky handsome man, leading from the front. We made way for them respectfully,” he says, adding: “Garibi mein jo garibi ki dignity thi, aaj usme sharmindgi hai (the dignity of the working classes, even in their poverty, has been replaced with shame).” 

I ask him a pointed question. What were Hindu-Muslim relations like back then? He answers the way only an old poet who has seen it all can: “They weren’t what they are now.” But the Hindi film industry has always been and continues to be different. “When I received the Dadasaheb Phalke award, I told the then President Pranab Mukherjee that he should stay in touch with film people. Apart from the Armed Services, it is the Hindi film industry that has always been steadfastly secular and that has not changed even today,” says Gulzar.  

Literature from everywhere 

Living in Mumbai, it was natural that Gulzar had close relationships with Marathi writers like P.L. Deshpande and V.V. Shirwadkar (Kusumagraj), and among younger contemporaries, the poet and critic Dilip Chitre. “If you have the urge to meet fellow writers, you pick up things and make friendships,” he says.

A regular at literary meetings and conferences, Gulzar’s deep bond with writers across Indian languages is testament to his belief that if you want to see the composite face of Indian literature, limiting yourself to just a handful of writers and languages won’t take you very far. He recalls close friendships with writers in Punjabi, Hindi, Urdu, Bangla, Oriya, Assamese and more. Referring to his seminal work A Poem A Day (2020), in which he has selected and translated 365 contemporary poems in 34 Indian languages by 279 poets, he says he likes to think this has something to do with the city he lives in. “This is a very progressive city but you must keep your antenna open.” 

The writer and curator is co-founder of First Edition Arts, a performing arts company.