Gulzar: from a Mumbai garage to the Jnanpith Award

A boy from Dina

Gulzar was born Sampooran Singh Kalra in 1934 in Dina, in the Jhelum district of Punjab, now in Pakistan. Gulzar is his pen name. According to a profile published when he won the Jnanpith, he began writing couplets and shayari at an early age, and his father was not pleased about this passion.

Partition split his family. Barely in his teens, the young Sampooran moved to Bombay to help support them. He took odd jobs, including painting dents on cars at a garage on Bellasis Road, near Mumbai Central station.

Books, Sundays and new friends

Alongside the work, he kept reading. The same profile says he read Rabindranath Tagore closely, finished his education, and spent Sundays with the Progressive Writers Association, a group of writers, poets and film people who met regularly in Bombay.

At these meetings he came to know the poet Shailendra and the filmmaker Bimal Roy. The two encouraged him to try a career in films, and Gulzar began working as an assistant to Bimal Roy.

Bandini and a long career in film

Gulzar was at first reluctant to write film songs. Shailendra and the composer S.D. Burman persuaded him to write one for Bimal Roy's film Bandini, released in 1963. Sung by Lata Mangeshkar, it became his first film song and is still remembered today.

More songs followed for films such as Aashirwad, Khamoshi and Guddi. Over the years he worked with many composers, from S.D. Burman, Salil Chowdhury and R.D. Burman to A.R. Rahman and Vishal Bhardwaj. He also wrote dialogues and screenplays.

In 1971 he directed his first film, Mere Apne. He went on to direct films including Koshish, Parichay, Aandhi, Mausam and Libaas, and in 1988 made the television series Mirza Ghalib, about the great Urdu poet, with Naseeruddin Shah in the title role.

He kept working for television too. He made Tahreer Munshi Premchand Ki, about the life of the Hindi and Urdu writer Premchand, and wrote dialogues for children's and family serials such as Jungle Book and Potli Baba Ki. Across all this work he has written in Urdu, Hindi and Punjabi, and the profile counts 22 Filmfare Awards among his honours. He also served as Vice-Chancellor of Assam Central University, a role that took him from the film studio to the classroom.

Honours for a lifetime of words

Gulzar received the Sahitya Akademi Award for Urdu in 2002 and the Padma Bhushan in 2004. The song Jai Ho, which he wrote for the film Slumdog Millionaire, won an Oscar in 2009 and a Grammy in 2010. In 2013 he received the Dadasaheb Phalke Award, and he has won at least five National Film Awards.

In February 2024 the Jnanpith selection committee named him, with the Sanskrit scholar Jagadguru Rambhadracharya, for the 58th Jnanpith Award, for the year 2023. It was only the fifth time the award had gone to Urdu. The committee noted that he created a new form of poetry, the Triveni, a three-line poem without rhyme, and that he has paid serious attention to poetry for children.

The skills and habits that made the difference

The first was writing early and often. Gulzar wrote couplets as a boy, even when his family did not approve, and kept writing through years of odd jobs.

The second was reading widely. While working in Bombay he read Tagore and spent his Sundays among poets and writers. Good writing in any language grows out of a lot of good reading.

The third was learning from people. Shailendra, Bimal Roy and S.D. Burman guided him into film, and he went on to work with generations of composers. He has also kept trying new forms, from film songs to the three-line Triveni to poems for children.