Thursday, January 4, 2007

Gulzar to do an album for children

The child in Gulzar Saab's heart seems to be asserting itself more strongly now that he has composed two back-to-back seductive chartbusters.

"I guess Kajra re and Beedi just happened. They were the demands of the hour. But a lot of the credit for Kajra re must go to Aishwarya. And now the credit for putting forward my Barso re song in Guru must again to Aishwarya. She's able to communicate such innocence and joy in the rain."

Innocence and joy will be the predominant emotions for Gulzar Saab's poetry in the coming year. "I'm doing an entire album of limericks for children with Vinay Sapru and Radhika (the duo who made the Salman-starrer Lucky). The very fact that they understood what I meant by children's limerick made me very happy."

Gulzar Saab has earlier done an entire album of music for children with composer Vishal Bharadwaj. "The number Chaddi pehen ke phool khila hai became very popular. That's the kind of limerick for children which I'll be doing in my new album for T Series."

The poet-filmmaker intends to go easy in 2007. "I had a surfeit of lyrics to write in 2005 and 2006. I need to slow down. I'm concentrating on my daughter Meghna's film which was earlier titled Baat Pakki. Now it's Just Married. Besides that my only other movie assignment in 2007 is Mani Ratnam's Lajjo which takes me to one of my favourite eras—India just before the Partition."

While Mani is writing the screenplay, Gulzar Saab will be working on designing the scenario with Mani, and of course the lyrics. "And hopefully I'll finally direct a film in the the coming year," he promises.

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