Vishal Bhardwaj's new poetry collection has been written over a period of 30 years. Pic/Sneha Kharabe

It's been seven years since this writer met Vishal Bhardwaj. The last time it was inside a cosy bookstore at a plush Lower Parel mall, where he had come to launch a book on female gangsters from the city, for which he had also penned the foreword. Today, when we catch up with him inside his Andheri West office, just before the extended Holi weekend, there's an immediate recall of that first encounter. Apart from scripting and churning several hits in those intervening years and wearing his salt-and-pepper hair slightly longer, some things about this soft-spoken National Award-winning filmmaker stay unchanged. For starters, his association with that book on the mafia remains - he is in the throes of giving shape to one of its stories, which will star Deepika Padukone and Irrfan Khan in the lead. And then, once again, we find that Bhardwaj has given his name to a new book title. Only this time, it's an entirely new poetry collection, and one that his mentor Gulzar reminded Bhardwaj, finally puts him in the league of a "sahib-e-kitaab". Not to mention, it's another new feather in the talented director-music composer-singer's cap.