Actually ...I Met Them, A Memoir - Gulzar

This is a highly readable book that captures in short and crisp chapters Gulzar's impressions with people who meant much to him and who he had met and worked with. The list includes Bimal Roy, Salil Choudary, Hemanta Mukhopadhyay, Satyajit Ray, Uttam Kumar, Kishore Kumar, RD Burman, Sanjeev Kumar, Hrishikesh Mukherjee, Pandit Ravi Shankar, Samaresh Basu, Basu Bhattacharya, Ritwik Ghatak, Pandit Bhimsen Joshi, Mahasweta Devi, Suchitra Sen, Tarun Majumdar and Sharmila Tagore. As he recounts his interactions with each of them, we discover so many facets of Gulzar's own life, precious insights into their creative collaborations, whims, idiosyncracies and so on.

I'll try and write one thing that stayed with me about each. Bimal Roy's commitment and mentorship to so many creative people who came from all over to Bombay, Salil Choudary who would do anything but work - ping pong, drives, Hemant Kumar who smoked incessantly, drove a Mercedes and paid the down payment for Gulazar's first home, Satyajit Ray with his impeccable English and his collaboration with Gulzar to remake Goope Gyne in Hindi, Uttam Kumar the most handsome man Gulzar met and their work together in Kitaab, Kishore Kumar's mad genius and the way he turned up bald before the shoot of Anand where he was finalised to be the protagonist and that's how Rajesh Khanna played that role, RD Burman and his love for chillies and the way they composed 'Musafir Hoon Yaaron' and 'Choti si Kahani', Sanjeev Kumar's great love for non-veg and his constant delays for shoots, Hrishikesh Mukherjee and his addiction to chess and his love for dogs, Pandit Ravi Shankar who composed music for Gulzar's 'Meera', Samaresh Basu and his maverick style and stories, Basu Bhattacharya and his love for poetry, Ritwik Ghatak and his inimitable rebellious style, Pandit Bhimsen Joshi who ran away from home to Gwalior and then Calcutta and then to Dharwad to train with different gurus and became the maestro he was and his love for driving his car all over, Mahasweta Devi who parted with film rights for her story because her favorite Dilip Kumar was acting in it, Suchitra Sen and working in Aandhi and how they caled each other Sir, Tarun Majumdar who brought up Raakhee, Sharmila Tagore and her two dimples - each little chapter revealing so much about the others as much as about Gulzar and about the amazing creative work they had all done between them. If one wonders why so many Bengalis its because Gulzar was a conferred Bengali as he learned the language so well and was as good or even better than many Bengalis with his Bangali literature. 

Fantastic book and one that I will keep in my bookshelf forever. Thank you thank you thank you.