Gulzar is one of the best lyricist of our times. From ‘Mora Gora Ang Lay Le‘ to ‘Dil To Bachcha Hai Ji‘, Gulzar has covered an amazing range of emotions with such poignancy. A single post can not do justice to his body of work so what I want to highlight is his metaphor for ‘Dhuan’. Poetry of any genre or era carries some common metaphors like Parwaanaa (Moth) in Shayari. Despite his single-minded yearning for Shamaa (Candle) it is his fate to die when united with her.
Poets have used metaphor of Smoke to signify symptoms of a burning fire within. For longing or unrequited love or. Like Meer said:
Ye Dhuaan sa kahaan se uthataa hai
Or have a look at following lines where Kaifi Azmi’s uses smoke literally to evoke other emotions:
nayi zameen nayaa asmaan nahi miltaa
Vo mera gaanv hai vo mere gaanv ke choolhe
ki jin mein shole to shole dhuaan naheen miltaa
But Gulzar has used Dhuaan totally differently in few of his works. He wants to express the feeling when you want to cry but no tears come out of your eyes. You might well up but no tears roll down your cheek. As if smoke has stung your eyes, literally. The shift is from a burning sensation within or real burning to the physical act of experiencing the affects of it; yourself. Case in point, his evergreen song of loneliness and urbanization from movie Gharonda:
Aab-o-daanaa dhoondta hai, ashiyana dhoondta hai
[aab = water, daana = seed (literally) aab-o-daana = subsistence]
Din khali khali bartan hai aur raat hai jaise andha kuan
In sooni andheri aankhon se aansoon ki jagah aata hai Dhuaan
Jeene ki vajah to koi nahi marne ka bahaanaa dhoondta hai
Can any one forget Maraasim, his collaboration with Jagjit Singh. Each ghazal from it is golden and so evocative. He used the word has radeef (the last rhyming word) in one of the ghazals.
Uthta to hai ghata sa barasta nahi dhuaan
Or for that matter his sensual lyrics from Dil Se:
Nainon tale dhuaan chale dhuaan chale
No wonder his prize winning collection of Urdu short stories was titled Dhuaan!
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