Gulzar creates a stampede at Jaipur Literature festival

Eminent song-writer Gulzar, who was scheduled to speak on lyrics in cinema at the ongoing literature festival here, almost could not make it to the venue thanks to the crowd, which also included former chief minister Vasundhara Raje and filmmaker Vidhu Vinod Chopra.

The organisers first tried to reschedule the venue but had to pacify the public by apologising and promising another session with the song-writer.

Raje and Chopra sneaked in laterinto the crowd, which completely ignored them, but they managed to get a stool to sit on thanks to their status but many were not so lucky. One cot could not bear the burden of listeners and broke. Many people opted to stand or sit on the ground even as an equally large crowd waited to get accommodated.

Convener Sanjoy finally decided to close the entry but cautioned the minder not to deny entry to the other two speakers - Javed Akhtar and Prasoon Joshi, who could manage to reach the venue only after a delay of 20 minutes. Gulzar, however, seemed a bit reluctant to do another session but finally conceded.

Gulzar has been a regular at the literature festival and it is not surprising that he manages to pull the maximum crowd. His first session had clashed with that of Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk but the lyricist's session was packed.

The Oscar-winning lyricist amused the audiences with little anecdotes on the birth of songs in Hindi cinema before Akhtar could join him and later apologised to his contemporary by saying," 'Maaf Kijiyega, main inhe behla raha tha (forgive me, I was just managing them).

It was not easy for the audience to ask him questions as he would reply with a question of his own but that did not discourage people from sharing their opinions with the poetic trio.

One school girl braved the crowd to ask, "There was a simplicity in our old songs. The vocabulary was simple and it touched our hearts. Why can't we have a similar vocabulary?"

Gulzar shot back, "You have used 'vocabulary' twice in your question. Can you tell me what it is called in Hindi?" She was clueless