Jiya Jale: The Stories of Songs

Jiya Jale: The Stories of Songs is a book by the author and television documentary producer Nasreen Munni Kabir, containing her conversations with Gulzar (an Indian filmmaker, lyricist, and poet) taking place from early 2017 to April 2018. Her second book on the same subject after In the Company of a Poet in 2012, it details the development of several of his songs and features their English translations. The book was published by Speaking Tiger Books on 10 November 2018 and acclaimed by critics for its contents and format. Kabir got the idea in 2016 when she was asked by the filmmaker Mani Ratnam to translate the dialogues from his 1998 Hindi-language romantic drama Dil Se..'s restored print to English. When she started working on the lyrics of the film's songs, she decided to meet the writer, Gulzar so she could get helps from him to guide her in the translation. Feeling it would be interesting if he could give more details about how he worked in lyrical composition, Kabir met him once more with the idea, which he agreed immediately. The book was done with fifteen 2+1⁄2-hour sessions of their discussions, while she was in London and he was in Mumbai.