Gulzar has also written the lyrics for Meghna Gulzar’s second film, Baat Pakki, which has a musical score by another youngster, Pritam. “I was very much a part of Meghna’s first film (Filhaal…) as well,” he says. With Shaad Ali, too, Gulzar has had a continuing partnership — Saathiya (scripted by Mani Ratnam), Bunty Aur Babli and the upcoming Jhoom Barabar Jhoom.

Nothing gets Gulzar more animated than talk of things literary. He is, therefore, understandably excited about his next collaboration with Mani Ratnam — the Aamir Khan-Kareena Kapoor starrer Lajjo, adapted from an Ismat Chughtai short story, Gharwali. Gulzar is writing the script for the upcoming film, as he is for a period romance to be directed by Shoojit Sircar.

When Shoojit came to Gulzar, what the young director had in mind was a reinterpretation of Bimal Roy’s classic Madhumati. The veteran poet-filmmaker-lyricist told him: “Yeh purani lagti hai. You have to change it for our times.” As a result, the film is no longer a remake of Madhumati — it’s now a love story set against the backdrop of the construction of the Kalka-Shimla railway tunnel. “The story may be set in the past, but the sensibility has to be new,” says Gulzar.

“If I make a film on the Partition today, it wouldn’t obviously look anything like what it would have two or three decades back,” he says. So is a film on the Partition somewhere in the Gulzar pipeline? Romu N. Sippy, the producer of Gulzar’s debut film, Mere Apne, has evinced interest in returning to film production by teaming up with the poet-filmmaker.

... contd.