My first brush with Gulzar, who has penned the lyrics for Jai Ho (literally “Praise be to you”), the song from the film Slumdog Millionarie, that has been nominated for best original song for the 81st Annual Academy Awards, was on a windy afternoon in Mumbai in 1998. No, not in person. I was riding in a bajaj (what they call rickshaws in India) and I was in a hurry. A song blared at full volume on a juiced up sound contraption rigged to the bajaj. There was something about the song that had me humming to its tune in spite of not understanding the lyrics, the full import of it. And then the cassette player chewed up the tape, the ribbon broke and the bajaj guy stopped.

He started banging his tape-recorder and working himself into a frenzy and refused to drop me at my destination till he could repair his cassette player. Perforce I stepped out of that rickshaw and into another and heard the same song blaring out of this one too. And when I landed up at my friend’s place it was just a matter of hours that the same song wafted in from his expensive music system: unmistakably the same song. I was intrigued: never ever have I seen two people from such disparate social structures—and more so in a class-conscious society like India’s— so unequivocally like the same notes, the same music, the same lyrics, the same song. Nothing common between the two and yet they were both transported into a dreamy world by the song. I must confess I was intrigued : a song that could transcend social barriers.
I asked my friend what’s the song about. Love, he said. And muttered two names: Gulzar and A R Rahman. The song was Chaiyya Chaiyya . . .chaiyaa as in Hindi language for shadow. I left it at that but fragments of the song stayed with me. Chal Chaiyya . ..Chaiyya . . . I marveled at the pair of name, Gulzar and A R Rahman, who could so easily capture the heart of an entire nation with their lyrics and their composition.

And then in 2007 in the darkened hall of a movie theatre in Singapore playing Hollywood’s The Bourne Ultimatum, fragments of the same song Chaiyya Chaiyya in the opening credits of the film transported an audience unfamiliar with the lyrics into rupture. Ah! I chuckled to myself, Hollywood had woken upto the duo of Gulzar and A R Rahman. And now, Oscar nomination for the same duo for another original composition for a motion picture, this time the song played in the end titles of the movie. Jai Ho! Praise be to you!!

I downloaded the song from the net. Heard it a number of times. The music mesmerizes you. The song stays with you. And I hummed the song for a couple of days, my tongue doing calisthenics trying to wrap itself in the syllables of an alien language. And then I chanced upon an Indian friend of mine. I asked him what’s the song about. Love, he said. I asked him are all Indian songs about love. He smiled. I pestered, if all Indian songs are about love, then what’s so special about it. You are humming it, without understanding a single word about it, that’s what’s special about it. He was being evasive. But, I guess, I was in luck. The friend was translating 100 of the lyricist’s songs into English for a publisher in India. And this song was a part of that collection. Jai Ho, Praise be to you! And I discovered a lyricist, a poet who in a career spanning more than four decades wrote songs mostly on love—the joy and pain of love, the triumph and tribulation of love, love in all its form. Much felicitated in his own country—he has the honor of collecting the maximum number of Filmfare Awards, India’s own Oscars, eighteen in all—winning the country’s National Awards, the Padma Bhushan, India’s highest civilian honour, it is time that the poet-lyricist get his due international recognition. And this Oscar nomination is in the right direction.

Born in Deena in pre-partition India in 1934, Gulzar penned his first original song for the motion picture Bandini (Prisoner) in 1971. And it speaks much about his capability and the appeal of his lyrics that the song is still readily available off the shelves in all music stores across India and still plays on the radio.

And here’s the English translation of the original song that is nominated for the Oscars:
come, come O Beloved
come step with me under this canopy
this azure canopy of a sky
filigreed with golden sunlight

come, I will tell you how
those dreary long nights—
without you—passed
each night— an ordeal
each night— a walk
on a bed of burning coals
look at the tips of my fingers:
singed, scorched from counting
the stars, but still
sleep was not to soothe my eyes
I had already blown it all away
believe you me—
those nights, I saw
life drain out of me
drop by drop

but tonight—
when you are with me—
this night is a pot of honey
come let’s savour it
and keep this heart of mine
with you, for the heart is
the last frontier

look! I am under your spell
that black kohl in your eyes
has whipped up
a kind of black magic

come, say out those words
that you have always
catapulted back from your lips
look at you—
blushing, lowering your eyes
it is now or never
come, say it

but let’s pause—
this night is fleet-footed
let’s take a breather
let’s prolong this night
but your eyes
with their brilliance of diamonds
has already lit up the night sky
filigreed it with the gold of the sun
come, come O Beloved
come become my life
come!
(excerpted from Gulzar: 100 Songs, translated by Sunjoy Shekhar, to be published by Penguin Books India)
My friend insists that the translation is not even a patch on the sound and the emotions, the celebration of love that the original evokes. Well, I can then just marvel at the original. Jai Ho! Praise be to Gulzar! And here’s wishing that he takes home that black guy everybody calls Oscar.