How to say ‘Thank You’!

On Gulzar, Bliss, timelessness and your art becoming immortal!

Bliss has this supernatural, superhuman, quality – it makes Creation speak through you.

We watched Meghna Gulzar’s Chhapaak the other day. It is a simple, powerful, film – great storytelling of acid attack survivor Laxmi Agarwal’s journey, a very nuanced performance by both protagonists, the extremely talented Deepika Padukone (who is also the film’s producer) and Vikrant Massey.

Laxmi’s story is well known. Even if you had not heard of it before, in watching the pre-release promotions for Chhapaak, you are sure to have realized that the film is based on a true story. Meghna makes the film an engaging, engrossing, immersive experience for the viewer. Her brilliance as a filmmaker shines through every frame in the film.

But what stays with you, and keeps coming back to haunt you, again, and again, and again, is the title track of the film.

This song has been written by Meghna’s father, the venerable Gulzar. It narrates the pain and anguish of an acid attack survivor. The lyrics are very disturbing. They stir your conscience. You feel helpless at your inability to do anything about this dastardly, cowardly act. If a lyricist-composer (Shankar-Ehsan-Loy)-singer (Arijit Singh) can evoke that response from within you, it is a remarkable feat! Even so, Vaani and I remain mesmerized by Gulzar’s writing here.

Sample the genius of his lyrics in this song:

Koi chehra mita ke, aur aankh se hata ke
Chand chheente uda ke jo gaya
Chhapaak se pehchaan le gaya

Ek chehra gira, jaise mohra gira
Jaise dhoop ko grahan lag gaya
Chhapaak se pehchaan le gaya…

Aarzoo thi shauq thhe, woh saare hat gaye
Kitne saare jeene ke dhaage kat gaye…

Let me attempt a simple (perhaps not authentic) translation:

A face was erased, was removed from sight…with sprinkling a few drops, in a splash, (someone) took away (my) identity

 A face fell, like a pawn falls, like sunshine is eclipsed, in a splash, (someone) took away (my) identity…

 (My) Aspirations and wishes, all of them have disappeared…So many threads of (my) Life have been snapped/cut away…

Listen to the full song here.

For us, the most evocative part of these lyrics is where Gulzar says, the splash, the chhapaak, from the acid attack, took away the survivor’s identity – pehchaan – and not (just) her beauty!!! Just this line, this brutal truth, leaves you angry and numb.

Gulzar. Gulzar. Gulzar.

I wonder how this man, at 85, still remains relevant, fresh and prolific? And the answer to that question, I guess, is simple. He has always, only, followed his Bliss.

Coming to Bombay from Dina (now in Pakistan), after the Partition, he started his songwriting career in 1963, with S.D.Burman in Bandini. Gulzar believes that discipline and feeling the pulse of the people, the world, around him are the key to his art, his Bliss, continuing to flow through him even after all these years.

In a 2016 interview to Harneet Singh in the Mint, he says: “Yes. Every day I am in my study. I write. I read. I research. You have to. Lafz dhoondne ke liye kaam toh roz karna padta hai (one has to work hard in order to find the right words).”  

In a 2017 interview to fellow lyricist Kausar Munir in the Hindustan Times, he says: ““You ask how I stay relevant even after more than five decades of writing?” He points to his table, “By feeling the pulse of the gully-mohalla, the nation, the globe that I live in. Being master of Urdu doesn’t interest me, being part of the global society does, breathing hope into that society matters to me”.”

 I firmly believe that Bliss has this supernatural, superhuman, quality – it makes Creation speak through you. Gulzar’s amazing, beautiful, expansive, often soul-stirring, body of work is evidence of this belief of mine.

You see, as Khalil Gibran has said so powerfully, we are all created from Life’s longing for itself. Without doubt, we have been born through a physical, biological act that involved our parents – yet they were mere vehicles to bring us into this world. Life created you and me not for us to slave away earning a living, but to do what we love doing, to create art, to create magic.

The real reason for your creation, your raison d’etre, is embedded in you, by Creation, by Life, even as you are born. And that reason is intertwined with your Bliss, with your idea of what makes you truly, deliriously, happy.

So, when you follow your Bliss, magic happens. Life speaks through you and everything you do is art, everything you do touches people, and every offering of yours makes the world a better place. We lose this opportunity to experience and co-create this magic when we sacrifice ourselves on the altar of economic security, often choosing to do what makes us intensely unhappy just so that we can earn a living. To be sure, Gulzar too, when he was Sampooran Singh Kalra and was a painter at a motor garage (Vichare Motors) in Bombay, almost sacrificed himself on this altar. But thankfully for himself, and for all of us, whose Life he has enriched, he followed his Bliss.

As I listen to the Chhapaak title track one more time, I bow my head in salutation, in prayer, in gratitude to Creation. I thank Life for giving us Gulzar. I thank Life for giving me an opportunity to live in his lifetime. And I thank Life for reminding me, through his beautiful journey, that when you follow your Bliss, you become timeless, even as your art becomes immortal!

Note: AVIS and Vaani are the happynesswalas. They believe their Life’s Purpose is Inspiring ‘Happyness’! They are going through a fascinating Life-changing experience – a crippling bankruptcy!! Look them up here: www.avisviswanathan.in and www.avinitiatives.co.in.

No year is good or bad, it’s just a happy one!

Life’s upheavals and scars, interestingly, make it beautiful, meaningful.

Last evening, I sat alone with my coffee at Starbucks. And I thought back on the year gone by.

It’s been an interesting one surely.

My dad passed on in April. It has been a new, unique, often reflectively painful, experience living without him. In May, our daughter Aanchal graduated in her Master’s program – thanks to two angels who sponsored her. Even so, she and our son, Aashirwad, have had to deal with their own share of challenges. Watching them deal stoically with these Life-defining experiences definitely made Vaani and me proud. But there were spells of agony too – arising from our inability to help them as parents; at all such times, we took refuge in prayer. Nalli’s Kuppuswami Chetti came forward serendipitously, voluntarily, miraculously, to publish the Tamizh translation of my book Fall Like A Rose Petal – and so, Uthirum Roja Ithazh Pola launched in October. Our 100^th non-commercial Conversation, as the happynesswalas – Inspiring ‘Happyness’, happened in April. And the 50^th Edition of our popular, longest-running, non-commercial, Conversation Series, #BlissCatchers, was hosted in August.

Although we awoke each day with renewed vigor to reinvest ourselves in the task of turning around our business and repaying our over 170 creditors, we have been pushed back by Life. One more time. Another year has passed without a steady or serious revenue opportunity. The glimmer of hope that came between end-2017 and mid-2018 evaporated this year, plunging us into yet another phase of worklessness; leaving us to survive on grace and grants. So, as we enter 2020, we continue to endure our bankruptcy – and all its material, emotional and legal challenges – into its 13^th year now!

Both Vaani and I are over 50 now. So, understandably, some persistent health issues certainly raised alarms all through 2019. They pointed to what could be potentially debilitating conditions, but without the means to immediately deal with them, we have left them where they are – for Life to heal, to take care!

As I thought deeply, I felt 2019 offered itself for review on two counts.

1. This was yet another tumultuous year, one that was often punishing. Given that we have already been faced with a grave challenge for over a decade now, on whether we deserved a year like 2019, we could possibly label it as bad or as ugly. Well, it certainly was not a good one on that scale!!!
2. A constant theme for Vaani and me, that was evident all through 2019, is Happiness! Clearly, Happiness has held us together and helped us endure and survive. Our ability to be non-worrying, non-frustrated and non-suffering – which is, essentially, being happy despite our circumstances – shone through the year, through one more year!

I quickly dropped the first count. And as I embraced the second one, I smiled to myself – in gratitude, in prayer, in surrender. I thanked Life for reiterating a lesson that we have learnt and known only too well over this past decade. Which is, no year is good or bad. It’s just a happy one!

You see, a year is, at one level, a simple measure of time that we humans invented. It denotes approximately 365.256 Earth cycles around the Sun. Good, bad, ugly – well, these are human labels, again human inventions! Something happens that meets or exceeds your expectations – you label it as good. Something that you don’t want happens to you and you call it bad. And if that something causes you acute trauma, makes Life unbearable, you call it ugly. Such is the human response to Life events. And a year gets labeled based on how you, as a human, have chosen to evaluate the events that occurred in your Life, based on your expectations! But although their actions deliver this unit of time called a year, the Sun and the Earth are not bothered about how – and what – we mortals think. Hafez, the 14th Century Persian poet, says this so beautifully: “Even after all this time, the Sun never says to the Earth, ‘You owe me’. Look what happens with a love like that, it lights up the whole sky.” Now, this is how Nature operates: without any concept of time or of profit or loss. The Sun simply, unconditionally, without judgment, lights up Life on the planet – it lights up our lives – even as the Earth keeps going around the Sun! There’s love, there’s abundance, there’s a selfless giving in both these acts. Therefore, there is no worry, there is no frustration, there is no suffering in how Nature works. There’s a pure, unadulterated, sense of just being – a.k.a Happiness!

Which is why a year can really, truly, be filled with Happiness! No matter what you are faced with, if you don’t complicate your Life with human ideas – if you don’t bring up your expectations, if you don’t analyze what you want and what you deserve and instead humbly accept what you are given – you will be happy!

Yes, as is with the process of Life, at every step, you will face upheavals. Just as you will be blessed with grace.

…~ You may find and follow your Bliss. People you know will die or leave you. There may be times when you will deal with material loss or there will be others when you have to cope with heartbreaks. You may not get what you want – someone else may get it though; and you will feel frustrated and suffer when you compare yourself with them! Your Life’s Purpose may find you. Some of the challenges you are dealing with may leave you numb. You may want answers to your questions or seek logic and reason that can explain whatever’s happening but you may end up being more frustrated with Life’s inscrutability. You may find love. A child may arrive in the family. The government you voted for with so much hope may let you down – horribly! You may win a jackpot. Or a dreaded health condition may not be what you have. Towards the end of the year, you may realize that your resolution to lose weight may have dissolved long, long ago, because the pangs of earning-a-living held you in their vice-like grip.~…

So, all these, and other, scenarios may well play out through the year. And such is the process of Life! To be happy you must simply trust this process. You must celebrate the suchness of Life. You must go with its flow.

In Japanese culture, there is this ancient art called kintsugi. It is the art of fixing broken pottery with golden lacquer. As a philosophy, kintsugi invites us to celebrate imperfections. It reminds us that what happens to an object, including its breakage and repair, is an integral part of its history. Which is so true of your journey through Life too. Every experience that you go through is part of the process of the unfolding of your myth. If you sit back and reflect on your own 2019, on how Life dealt with you this year, you will see how every upheaval, every scar in your Life, is precious in its own way. You will realize how you have emerged stronger and wiser from each experience you have been through. You will be amazed at how you have learnt to cope, how you have moved on this year too, just as you have done, all your Life.

This is why it is pointless to label a year as good or bad (or ugly). A set of events simply happened to you this past year. And another set will happen in the year coming up. Instead of over-analyzing and labeling the year gone by, embrace what is, and train your mind to be non-worrying, non-frustrated and non-suffering. This holds the key to your Happiness. This is the way a “Happy New Year” stays true to its meaning and you stay happy through those 365.256 times that the Earth circles the Sun!

Note: AVIS and Vaani are the happynesswalas. They believe their Life’s Purpose is Inspiring ‘Happyness’! They are going through a fascinating Life-changing experience – a crippling bankruptcy!! Look them up here: www.avisviswanathan.in and www.avinitiatives.co.in.

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