Gulzar's poetry to embellish Gupta's 'Dus Kahaniya'

Mumbai, Sep 22 (IANS) It's arguably one of the most incongruous creative pairings in the history of Indian cinema. Producer Sanjay Gupta has convinced poet par-excellence Gulzar to lend words, images and thoughts to the 10 stories that comprise Gupta's short-story bouquet of "Dus Kahaniyan"

Gupta said: "I know it's like guns and roses coming together. But I've been convincing Gulzar Saab to be part of my cinema for a long time. I'm his biggest fan in the world. And my car has only CDs of his songs."

He added: "Gulzar Saab will take a look at all the 10 stories of 'Dus Kahaniyan'. Based on his perception of each story he'll write a suitable poem for each story.

"All the poems will be recited by the actors in the stories, namely, Sanjay Dutt who has shot for a short story entitled 'Rise and Fall', Nana Patekar who stars in the story 'Gubbare', Naseer and Shabana who come together in the story 'Rice Plate' and Amrita Singh who plays the lead in Meghna Gulzar's 'Puranmaasi'.

"Apart from the music from 'Dus Kahaniyan', we'll bring out a special CD of these poems by Gulzar Saab."

Gulzar said: "Sanjay Gupta and I've met and I've liked his concept. It would be interesting to make my poetry a reflection of the visuals in his short stories. I feel the scope of poetic expression is expanding in our cinema. All I insisted on was that Sanjay get the actors from the different stories to recite the poems and not have me do that."

Gupta said: "You know I'm responsible for flooding the film-music market with songs about ishq and mahiya. I've forbidden all my lyricists from using these two words in any of our films. Now my cinema needs a new poetic expression. Hopefully Gulzar Saab will allow his vision to be part of more films from my production house."

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Dus Kahaniyaan