But the 74-year-old song-writer is completely against one trend, that of remixing old songs, and he is not ready to listen to the excuse of changing times here. Gulzar feels that it is a crime against the cinematic history of India.
“I am against remixing. The songs are now used only to dance. Who are you to temper with someone else’s creation,” Gulzar told a packed audience at the ongoing Jaipur literature festival.
“I blame the present generation for destroying cinematic history. It is like repainting Ajanta and Ellora. They don’t need a song to listen, they want to dance on the tunes and thus wreck havoc on the old songs,” he said.
When asked by an audience member whether colouring of classics like “Mughal-e-Azam” would be considered bad, too, Gulzar promptly said: “Yes. It should not have been done.
Who are we to redo K Asif’s vision?”
He was accompanied by two other eminent lyricists, Javed Akhtar and Prasoon Joshi, for the session “Geet Gaata Chal.” And it was not often that the trio agreed on one topic, much to the delight of the audience.
Akhtar blamed the change in Bollywood songs on a sense of embarrassment in the present generation of filmmakers. The lyricist said there is a rush to ape the western structure in Indian cinema.
Joshi, however, said expression has become more direct in cinema so there is no need to always convey certain emotions through songs.
“You could not say certain things through dialogues in the old days because expressing it directly was considered bad. But now there is no such barrier, there is nothing that you cannot say through dialogues now,” he added.
Gulzar agreed with Joshi and said: “There was a time when people hid flowers in books. It would take a lifetime to say ‘I love you’, but now you can do it just with an sms.