On his 70th birthday Saturday,
writer-filmmaker Subhash Ghai, credited with movies like "Karz", "Hero",
"Karma", "Saudagar", "Khalnayak", "Pardes" and "Taal", has spoken
fondly of his lesser known talent as a lyricist.
He says penning poetry comes from the experience of writing scripts and dialogues for films, automatically.
"Actually,
as a writer I wrote the story of the film ('Yaadein'), script and the
dialogues. When a dialogue writer writes the script, automatically the
poetry comes from dialogues. When words (are) strung together, you can
create poetry from dialogues," Ghai said during a radio interview on a
92.7 BIG FM show.
Ghai not only wrote the dialogues for "Jogger's
Park" (2003), but also the lyrics of some of the songs in the film.
However, he doesn't consider himself a professional writer.
"During
filming of 'Jogger's Park', when Bakshi sahab was not around, the songs
were written by three to four writers... So whenever a song's tune was
made, I would immediately pen down some lyrics. So for example, the
songs 'Jogger's park', 'Kabhi pa liya to kabhi kho diya' and 'Khelenge
khelenge' ('Iqbal') were written by me," he said.
"There were no
ego hassles involved...I wrote the mukhra (intro) for many songs, while
he would write the antara (stanza), for example, 'Taal se taal mila',
'Har karam apna karenge' and 'Zindagi har kadam ek nayi jung hai'.
Because these were written in the story itself, so the songs made sense.
I am not a professional writer,†he added.
The filmmaker says his love for writing dates back to 1955.
"I
have been writing since 1955 till date. I was about 12 years then. So
the first piece I wrote was an essay for my school magazine. Then I
wrote a story, plays and then in college I started writing my own
stories, directing and even acting in them by then. I loved writing and
reading stories, I used to read a lot of them.
"Because of that
till date, if someone gives me a brief of few lines, I will be able to
either make a mukhra out of it, or an entire scene out of it with
dialogues. If you write for that long, then you inculcate the skill of
writing too. Even when I watch movies of others, I concentrate on the
writing and story," he said.
Ghai feels although films are a
visual medium, if written well, their true beauty comes out. Citing the
example of Aamir Khan-starrer "PK", he said: "...movies like 'PK', not
just their story but their characters are beautifully etched out too.
Movies work and credit must go to writers because they bring the story
to life."
The interview will be broadcast Sunday.
