![]() The loss of childhood is reflected in the separation of family, leaving him with only a couple of small toys as glimmers of his former existence. The sense of disappointment is palpable as the 88-year-old writes, “The millstone of Time goes around only once / Grinding everything fine in that one cycle.” Especially as he mentions in the poem, ‘If Possible…’, that even though Pakistan had been his motherland, it was no longer his country due to the endless bureaucracy of having to provide proof of belonging in the form of visas.Īs the book continues, we see a young Gulzar become increasingly untethered and disconnected from that motherland when he recounts the first deaths at the border and the moment when he understood they were refugees, escaping their home amid blood, fire, and smoke. He calls it “desolate” with “only a whiff” of his former life remaining. But there is something unsatisfactory about his experience of returning to that same place seventy years later in 2013. ![]() It is hardly surprising that the lens through which he remembers his past life makes it appear, as he asserts, like a “silent film” in itself. Many of his flashbacks are based on youthful play, such as dhaiyya chhoona, when a predetermined spot has to be reached and the player has to touch that spot before running back. ![]() And that shadow “whispers from behind me, / “When you give up this body / Come back to your home / Your birthplace, your motherland.”‘ From the games that he played as a young boy such as stapoo, to kisses that he stole as a six-year-old with his sweetheart, Dina is the place where time has stood still for Gulzar. After all, “dreams have no borders.” He describes how, standing at that ‘Zero Line’ on the Indian side, his shadow falls in Pakistan. The lyricist states that his body still belongs to the other side despite leaving the country at the age of eight. The first poem, ‘Zero Line’, describes the international boundary that separates India and Pakistan at the Wagah border. But it is in Dina, to which this collection is dedicated, that we see the origins of Sampooran Singh Kalra, as he was known then, and his desperate bid to find solace back in his childhood home through faint recollections and meandering dreams. Following the 1947 Partition, Gulzar and his family, along with millions of others, were forced to settle across the frontier. ![]() Known for his six-decade award-winning movie and music career, Gulzar’s writings suggest a far humbler beginning, where he wrote on the walls of Dina in Pakistan “with a piece of coal.” Dina, a city in the Jhelum District of Punjab province of Pakistan, is one of the oldest towns in the region, and one of the border areas of India. The effects have been felt decades later when he was startled into confronting that past, came to terms with his own nationalistic hubris, and witnessed new levels of the divisiveness that still plagues the region. For the acclaimed author and screenwriter, “Time has not been able to blow off the footprints.” This is clear in his evocative prose as he moves between being a survivor and narrator, clinging to a past that has left him psychologically and physically displaced. Several of the stories here have appeared in other collections like Raavi Paar, but this is the first time they have been assembled thematically in a single volume. With Footprints on Zero Line: Writings on the Partition, a collection of poetry, fiction, and non-fiction on the Partition, the virtuoso artist has joined countless other writers in exploring personal and communal histories. With a vast body of work spanning various media over decades, Gulzar is a household name in India and beyond for his romantic song lyrics, haunting poetry, groundbreaking screenplays, TV and film direction, and more. Website.įootprints on Zero Line: Writings on the Partition by Gulzar | HarperCollins India | July 02, 2018 Suswati Basu is a journalist and literary specialist, running the How To Be… podcast to promote reading for self-care.
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