The hall in the India Islamic Centre, Delhi was tightly packed with fans and literary connoisseurs on Friday for the release of three books on Gulzar’s three iconic Bollywood movies— Aandhi, Angoor and Ijaazat. Seeing the enthusiastic audience in the hall, Gulzar remarked, "Jaise aapne aaj hall bhar di hai, kash mere filmo ke hall aise bharte."
The books released were named after the movies they were based on-- namely Aandhi, Angoor and Ijaazat. The books based on these movies are written by Saba Mahmood Bashir, Sathya Saran and Mira Hashmi respectively and published by HarperCollins India. Mira Hashmi could not attend the event in Delhi, but Saba Mahmood Bashir and Sathya Saran joined Udayan Mitra, Publisher- HarperCollins India, and Gulzar Sahab to discuss his movies and their impact.
Talking about how she came to write about the 1975 movie Aandhi, Saba said that though Namkeen is her favourite movie by Gulzar, Aandhi as a book was “more viable”. Saba, a poet, author and translator, has written I Swallowed the Moon: The Poetry of Gulzar and translated Gulzar’s screenplays of Premchand’s Godaan and Nirmala and Other Stories.
They then discussed how the film was considered political and was said to be based on Indira Gandhi’s life, to which Saba said, "1975 was the time when super-hit films like Sholay, Dewar, Jai Maa Santoshi were released. This was also the year when the Emergency was imposed. I have a very strong feeling that Aandhi got into trouble for no reason… It was already a hit film. It was an article which came at that time which said ‘see your Prime Minister on-screen’ and a ban was imposed on the film.”
Sharing his point of view, Gulzar said, “The movie was banned saying that it is based on Mrs Gandhi’s life, which is not true. We all know Mrs Gandhi’s life. It has absolutely no resemblance to her life, but it has a resemblance of a portrayal, as a symbol… Whenever an actor has to portray a character, or a writer has to draw a character they draw a model/ inspiration from someone. It was the first time when a Hindi movie was being made about a female politician… At that time, there couldn’t be a better model than Mrs Gandhi.”
Saba further added that Gulzar’s 1999 movie Hu Tu Tu seemed like a sequel to his 70s movie Aandhi, while Maachis seems to be the sequel of the 1971 movie Mere Apne which highlighted the issues of unemployment.
They went on to discuss Angoor, based on Shakespeare's play The Comedy of Errors. The book on Angoor is written by Sathya Saran, Consulting Editor with HarperCollins India. She has previously written biographies of Guru Dutt and S.D. Burman. Though a Gulzar fan, she was initially reluctant to write on Angoor as it's a comedy. "I want to be tragic," she joked, "it's more beautiful."
Udayan Mitra pointed out that this movie still plays a lot on TV and they both agreed that no matter what time you put it on, you would get drawn in. "It's addictive," Satya said. “When I started writing on Gulzar Sahab’s wonderful dialogues in the movie, I listened to them again and again and ended up watching the whole film… It’s true of the songs as well,” she said.
On being asked about the history of Angoor and how it evolved, Satya replied, “Comedy of Errors has a history in theatre and cinema, it has been made in many languages across the world. Do Duni Chaar was a mix of Comedy of Errors and Bhranti Bilas, and Gulzar brought his own skills and language—but it didn’t work.”
The conversation later shifted to the third book Ijaazat, on Gulzar’s iconic film of the same name. The book is written by Pakistani author Mira Hashmi. Though not present in person, Mira sent a video where she spoke on writing a book on Gulzar Sahab’s iconic work. When asked how he conceptualised the story, Gulzar answered, "I was always a storyteller and I loved writing short stories and reading short stories; they are my favourite form of storytelling… I read Subhodh Ghosh’s story Jatugriho at Abhi da’s home and I loved it. Later I came to know that Tapan Sinha has made a film on it in Bangla, but there’s no film on it in Hindi… So I bought the rights from Subhodh Ghosh, whom I called the Maupassant of Bengali short story literature, and decided to make it into a film.”
“Bengal has a huge market for short stories… In fact, it is Urdu and Bengali in which some of the best stories can be found. Other languages also have novels in them but none like those in these two languages,” Gulzar said.
The discussion on the movies and books went on for a while before the writers on stage took questions from the audience.
The evening concluded with a bustling book signing session where Gulzar himself co-signed the books with the authors as his fans of all ages tried to get pictures.