fहndi - Mahatma Gandhi Antarrashtriya Hindi Vishwavidyalaya

glamour and fame, I always looked at hiswritings with suspicion. But as I keptreading him, my pleasant surprisecontinued to increase. And now that I haveread his short stories, I am furthersurprised. You may or may not be surprised,but at least you will not remain what youwere after reading them.That Gulzar is an artist there is nodoubt about that. But there is differencebetween art and art and every art has itsown criteria. It is not necessary that anartist in one genre will be equally successfulin another genre. Fame in films apart, Icould hardly imagine that he would be sogood at story writing. With many thingsin literature it is the same as in love.Planning or formulas do not work there.In fact much that happens in it isunintentional and abrupt with consciouseffort not having as much a hand asunconscious inner excitement. Some peoplestart writing late. There is no hard andfast rule about it but practice is an essentialcondition for propitiating the goddess ofart. I believe Gulzar must have been writingfrom the beginning due to his innercompulsions and must have been derivingsolace from it. When writing becomes ameans of achieving inner ecstasy and solaceand not of any outer attainment or gain,then it begins to assume the colour ofcreative inquiry. And if you have awarenessof what art demands, it is all the morebetter. As I kept on reading his short stories,my apprehensions about his literarycapacity continued to turn into a pleasingreassurance. It is not often necessary forone to read everything for expressing anopinion, particularly when one feels thatthe rest is also similar. But Gulzar is abeguiling artist; he tricks you at every step.Often it is seen that when film people writethey can hardly come out of romantic orformulaic writing. That is, they return againand again to the same kind of atmospherein which they have passed their life.Romantic subjects sort of constrict theirminds, and this constriction catches holdof them like the original sin, and they cannever rise above it. But amazingly in caseof Gulzar the story writer in him is notmerely the creator of this wavelength orthat wavelength. In his case a new aspectof life is unravelled in every story of his,a new level, a new angle, a new experiencewhich reveals a mind or a consciousnessnot attached to this or that outlook, butto the truth of life in its entirety or thatvast experience of life that does not createboundaries, does not raise enclosures, doesnot stop at any one level of relationship,hates, loves, but looks right through realitiesand embraces all the varied facets of lifeand all dimensions of experience.For any artist this is no ordinary feat.Ghalib had described a musical instrumentas a repository of melodies. Gulzar's shortstories need only a little tuning and notesof life's music start flowing from them.For an artist who has dedicated his entirelife to film-making, it is no small14 :: April-June 2013fgndi •