‘I don’t claim to understand love’: Imtiaz Ali reflects on ‘Socha Na Tha’, ‘Jab We Met’ and ‘Main Vaapas Aaunga’

Initially from Thought Na Tha and then Jab We Met all the way to his latest release Main Vaapas Aaunga Imtiaz Ali has shown romances across generations and decades through his films.

While his newest offering is getting love everywhere for the sheer intensity of its heart centered love story the filmmaker keeps insisting that he does not actually claim to have the knowledge of love.

“I’m not coming from a point of understanding love into the movies that I’m making,” he says.

He reflects on his early works as he shares, “In Thought Na Tha the confusion of Viren was actually my confusion. Sometimes you commit in a direction and your heart pulls in some other direction. That was something I didn’t find an answer for but I made a movie.”

Imtiaz says, “Jab We Metin my mind was not even about a love relationship. It is about two people who meet like strangers and they kind of become like each other. They complete each other and they realize that later. Again I was not coming from a point of knowing anything about love. Similarly in Main Vaapas Aaunga when I spoke to partition veterans, I realized that what made them survive through all the agonies and miseries through partition is the love in their hearts.”

“The gregariousness and the exuberance of Sharvari was very important for Jiya being the way she is and just the earnestness of Vedang Raina was very important for Keenu and these two are the attributes for which I cast them. When they were together I have never had a pair in films working so well. You don’t act against each other, you act with each other and these two people have proved it,” he says proudly.

The director also gushed about the veteran star Naseeruddin Shah for bringing the depth he did to the story.

“Naseer is a fantastic actor and he has gone through the emotions of the story so extremely well, because everything that he is performing you must understand he is performing from some memory which has been created in his mind. You don’t see him do any of those things that he is talking about as they are being done by Vedang in the film. It’s a great testimony to how acting is and how imagination is so important. I salute Naseer for having done this part so well,” he ends.