Gulzar: The greatest storyteller ever in Hindi Cinema

This is a tribute to Gulzar who is widely acknowledged as the best poet ever to have graced Bollywood. But sadly his efforts as a film-maker are surprisingly underrated and hardly ever talked about. Frankly, before I embarked on this journey of viewing and assimilating forgotten chapters of our Hindi cinema, I had hardly heard about one or two of his movies- Parichay (very popular on TV) being one. But now that I have almost seen all the films made by him (3 remain excluding Libaas that never got released), I can say with absolute certainty that he has always been a genius film-maker who has risen above the mediocre and tried to come up with amazingly simple stories that touch upon a plethora of issues and showcase human emotions most appealingly. His films are not art-house, nor are they run of the mill stuff- they lie somewhere in between and try to bridge the gap between the two by choosing to mix the best of both the worlds.

I am thrilled that I have seen most his films. In some ways I am a better person after watching them. If not better, certainly wiser... I have written about all these movies on this blog... You can use the following links to access them... I will keep on adding more movies once I am done writing about them.

Achanak (1973)
Ijaazat (1987)
Khushboo (1975)
Kinaara (1977)
Kitaab (1977)
Koshish (1972)
Lekin (1990)
Masoom (1983) Screenplay Dialogue and Lyrics
Mausam (1975)
Namkeen (1982)
Parichay (1972)
Palkon Ki Chhaon Mein (1977) Screenplay Dialogue and Lyrics (And directed by Meraj- his AD)




Note: He also collaborated with another great, Mr. Hrishikesh Mukherjee, on a number of films for which he wrote the screenplay and dialogues. They are amongst the most loved classics of Hindi cinema:
Anand (1971) Screenplay and Dialogue
Bawarchi (1972) Dialogue
Chupke Chupke (1975) Screenplay and Dialogue
Guddi (1971) Screenplay and Dialogues
Khubsoorat (1980) Dialogue
Namak Haram (1973) Screenplay and Dialogue