Gulzar's Poetry and Lyrics: How One Writer Turned Ordinary Objects into Feelings

The poet of the everyday object

Sampooran Singh Kalra, who writes as Gulzar, was born in 1934 in Dina, a town now in Pakistan. His first film song, "Mora Gora Ang Lai Le" for Bandini (1963), arrived with an unusual feeling: rural, domestic and quietly bold. Six decades later his name is shorthand for a particular kind of image — a coat left on a chair, a half-finished cup of tea, a house key that no longer fits.

What makes his imagery different

Classical ghazals reach for roses, nightingales and moons. Gulzar reaches for things you could find in your own home. In "Mera Kuch Saamaan" (Ijaazat, 1987), a separated couple argues over a list of belongings — a few rainy nights, a letter, a half-dried leaf — and the song becomes a portrait of what stays after a relationship is formally over. The emotional power comes not from declaring grief but from itemising it.

"Haath chhootein bhi to rishte nahin chhoda karte,
Waqt ki shaakh se lamhe nahin toda karte."
— Gulzar

The couplet insists that bonds outlast the physical gesture of letting go, and the second line reaches for a gentle botanical image: moments are fruit on time's branch, not to be plucked carelessly. Notice how a simple natural metaphor carries an entire emotional argument.

Three entry points

• The songs: "Tujhse Naraaz Nahin Zindagi" (Masoom), "Ek Akela Is Shehar Mein" (Gharaonda) and "Tere Bina Zindagi Se" (Aandhi) show his range from bewilderment to tenderness.
• The free verse: his nazms — notably those collected in Raat Pashmine Ki — treat night, silence and memory as characters in a household.
• The films: as a director (Aandhi, Mausam, Angoor, Ijaazat) he applies the same eye for detail to storytelling.

Recognition

His career has been honoured widely: an Academy Award and a Grammy for "Jai Ho" (2009), the Dadasaheb Phalke Award in 2013 and the Jnanpith Award in 2023. Yet readers tend to remember a smaller, humbler thing — the line that made them recognise their own kitchen in a poem.

Reading him as a writer

If you write shayari, study how Gulzar picks nouns. He rarely uses abstract words like "sorrow" or "joy" in the first line; he gives you the object first and lets the emotion walk in on its own. Try this exercise: write a couplet about someone who is gone using only three physical things they left behind.