/> Ever since he connected with the younger music listeners with Kajra re, Gulzar Saab has been really letting his hair down.

"Ab mere khelne-kudne ki din aa gaye," Gulzar laughs. The youthful progression continues with the song Ek lo ek muft in Mani Rathnam's Guru ...a masti song composed by A.R Rahman, sung by Bappi Lahiri and filmed on a bhang-soaked Abhishek Bachchan dancing with twins in his hands.

The situation? Abhishek's wife in the film Aishwarya has given birth to twins. "Hence the lines Ek lo ek muft ....you know the catch-phrase in every supermarket... 'Buy One Get One Free,' chuckles Gulzar Saab.

The poet is proud of his rapport with Mani. "We worked really well together in Dil Se. Chaiyyan chaiiyan, though poetically worded, connected with the young. Then in Yuva Mani worked with another lyricist.

Now we're together again in Guru and Mani's next Lajjo which will be a welcome challenge. It will take me back to Punjab and the pre-Partition era---two of my favourite themes for writing."

Gulzar Saab seems to have discovered the tongue-in-cheek side to himself. And he's enjoying every bit of it. "A lot of people are shocked by my Beedi song in Omkara. They can't believe I can write something so aggressive. But what's there to be shocked about?

It's the situation that demands a song, and not the other way around. For too long, we've had characters singing poetry that doesn't suit them. It's time for lyrics to reflect the way the characters speak in the rest of the film," Gulzar Saab says, explaining the profusion of English words in the lyrics of Jaan-e-Mann.

"But that's the way young people speak! So why should we be shy of expressing what the characters express? As a lyricist it's my job to sublimate my poetry into the requirement of the characters and the plot. Hence, the urban conversational lyrics in Jaan-e-Mann." Though he has faced fettered flak for his Beedi song Gulzar Saab got a pleasant surprise when Hindi litterateur Kamleshwar called up to say he watched Omkara with his grand-child.

Reaching across three generations is indeed no mean achievement.

"Kajra re and Beedi jalaye le are known as item songs. But I've kept them completely free of suggestive words. I'm happy about that," says Gulzar Saab.