/> "Average-wise Gulshan Bawra was the Don Bradman among lyricists. We knew each other before we both came into the cinema. He was almost a family member. Meri desh ki dharti happened when we had gone to a shrine to pay our respects.

When we returned from the shrine in the car he was singing Mere desh ki dharti sona ugley/ Jawanon bhar bhar lo jholiyan/ Khushi se bolo boliyan....I kept quiet as he hummed these lyrics. 2-3 years later when I made Upkar I went to (music composer) Kalyanji and narrated the script. I called Gulshan home and told him the situation.

I recalled the lyrics I had heard him hum near the shrine....It had stayed in my mind... I saw it as a great idea which needed to be impromised. I didn't at all like the lines Jawanon bhar lo jholiyan/Khushi se bolo boliyan...I was dead against these lines and removed it from my Upkar.

Instead we had Meri desh ki dharti sona ugley ugle here-moti. Both Kalyanji and Gulshan Bawra were hesitant. They said the mukhda of a song couldn't be of one line. But I was adamant. An hour later Gulshan who was sitting in the next room jumped and said, ‘This is great'.

Every filmmaker while writing a screenplay comes to a landmark point in the plot where he thinks a scene can be narrated musically. That situation is given to the lyricist and explained.That was how Mere desh ki dharti happened. I always had lyrics first, then the tunes (in our films the reverse process is applied).

Gulshan had written another song Har khushi hai wahan to jahan bhi rahe in Upkar. He couldn't write the whole song because he had to take my brother to college in Ajmer. Gulshan himself told the media that the second stanza of Har khushi hai wahan was written by Aziz Kaifi and Manoj Kumar. Gulshan was a jolly good fellow.

I came to know about his illness 2 ½ months back. He told me was undergoing the last radiation and was ok otherwise. We met at Shakti Samanta's Choutha and he told me he was absolutely fine. He was very excited because he had purchased a new car after 27 years.

He was proud to have paid so much money for a new car. I was thankful to God that my friend was okay. But..... (trails off)...He's alive in every word of Mere desh ki dharti....That song is imperishable. When Mahendra Kapoorji (who sang Mere desh ki dharti) expired our prime minister Manmohan Singh said he would always be remembered for Mere desh ki dharti. It hurts to know so many people connected with that song—Kalyanji, Mahendra Kapoor, Gulshan Bawra—are no more.

Gulshan worked very well with Prakash Mehra in songs like Yaari hai imaan mera. Before he became well- known he wrote songs under a pseudonym. He was also a very good comedian. He never brooded, always made everyone laugh with his mimicry. I don't know when he sat and wrote.

He was always on the move. Whenever we met I asked him, how are you. And he'd hum one of his hit songs, ‘Iss gulshan ko ujre huey ek zamana beet gaya.'We were from the same village near Lahore.

My chief assistant Sikandar was Gulshan's cousin. So we were bonded much beyond cinema. Filmmaker Kewal Sharma, cricket player Manmohan Sood, Gushan and I ...we were good friends. Gulshan has only gone away physically. He was a wonderful man. He was a friend to everyone, never a gossip. God bless his soul. All my love to his wife."