Staying With The Poet: A Conversation with Gulzar

In this landmark episode of The Soft Record, we sit down with Gulzar for a rare, unhurried conversation on poetry, language, violence, love, nationhood, and hope. This is not a retrospective, and not an interview driven by chronology.Instead, Gulzar reflects  on  how his imagery emerges from a simple lived honesty and not some grand  intellectual design. He examines the present moment through contemporary poetry — poetry that bears witness to riots and war, to broken bodies and burning cities, to care, tenderness, childhood, and the moral limits of words. Across the conversation, he speaks about: Poetry as shelter, as witness, and as responsibility Love as care rather than romance War, riots, and the fragmentation of human life India’s emotional journey since 1947, read through modern poetry The overlooked complexity of poetry from the North East Silence, speech, and why words must be spoken while life still touches us Humility before younger poets, and the endurance of hope This episode asks what poetry can — and cannot — do in times of violence.And what it means to stay with language when words no longer promise comfort. 🎧 Watch the full episode now. Presented by KindleCast Hosted by Pritha Kejriwal Chapters: 00:00 — Opening the Door: An Intimate Conversation with Gulzar 05:53 — When Poems Write the Poet: Revisiting One’s Own Words 10:09 — “Cage”: When a Poem Speaks Back — Voice, Memory, and the Geography of Moments 14:50 — Where Poems Hide: Cigarette Packets, Fragments, and Memory 30:10 — Matchboxes and Milky Ways: Holding the Mundane and the Infinite Together 35:00 — Knowledge, Wonder, and the Light That Slips Under Closed Doors 42:46 — Childhood as a Way of Being: Playing with Language, Not Preaching Through It 50:56 — Broken Metres, Broken Worlds: When Form Reflects Reality 01:05:25 — Nine Years, 279 Poets: Translating a Living, Breathing India 01:11:18 — Silence, Survival, and the Compulsion to Speak 01:13:50 — When a Single Couplet Challenges an Entire Diwan