His argument is simple enough: our everyday speech has changed just as much as popular Hindi cinema has since he debuted with the evocative Mora gora ang lai le (in Bimal Roy’s Bandini, 1963). “A lyricist,” he says, “has to keep the characters and their backgrounds in mind. When a character in a film speaks a language that has a generous smattering of English words or folksy expressions from a rustic patois, he or she certainly won’t sing a Ghalib ghazal.”

“I have tried,” he explains, “to expand the vocabulary of the item song by going beyond dil, pyaar, masti… and adding words like lihaaf and ghilaaf to the repertoire.”

“I have lived in a particular frame for too long… It’s time to move on,” he says. The past few years of Gulzar’s eventful lyric-writing career have indeed represented a concerted endeavour to “get out of the old shell and adopt a new idiom”.

The past couple of years have been particularly remarkable. Everything he’s touched has turned to gold. His lyrics for Bunty Aur Babli,

Yahaan, Paheli, Omkara, Jaan-e-Mann and now Guru have catapulted him into the pantheon of all-time greats.

Interestingly, Gulzar prefers teaming up with younger filmmakers. “I enjoy working with them. It gives me an understanding of how creative minds of this generation think and that helps me reinvent myself,” he says.

“This generation,” says Gulzar, “is worth travelling with. This generation has made it possible for Hindi cinema to break into the global mainstream on its own terms.” Earlier, he points out, a Mumbai film had to drop its songs and shorten its length for overseas distribution.

... contd.