New Delhi | In classrooms and other rooms, trains and DTC buses… Imtiaz Ali, the master director of relationship dramas such as “Jab We Met”, says all his stories begin as daydreams and what-if scenarios imagined during random musings.
And once an idea takes root, he discusses it with people around him, finding some excuse to narrate the story even if he is travelling in an autorickshaw.
“Then there comes a point when I finally sit down and write it,” Ali told PTI during a visit to its headquarters in Delhi, breaking down what it takes to write his stories.
The 54-year-old, whose filmography includes movies as diverse as “Highway”, “Rockstar” and “Amar Singh Chamkila”, is the rare director who has written all his films.
"As Ghalib said, 'Aate hain ghaib se ye mazamin khayaal mein (All that I am writing stems from the invisible)’. We don't know where these stories come from, mostly from the subconscious. But I feel that I get inspired by things that I see around me. And I build my imagination there on," Ali said.
Is there a personal well that he draws from?
"More than a well. My mental constitution is that of a daydreamer. I'm basically a daydreamer. And I sit in the room and imagine things to entertain myself. I've been doing that ever since I remember. In classrooms, in journeys, in trains and everywhere, just daydreaming for entertainment.”
The thinking begins when he sees something or meets someone, and continues long after the encounter is over.
“I think about what might have happened, where could they have gone… who lives in that house I look at from a train, when it stops at Ratlam station and things like that. And these stories add up."
His latest "Main Vaapas Aaunga", a remembrance of a romance with Partition as the backdrop, took root from his many encounters with people while shooting for his films in Delhi and Punjab. He met many people who had undergone the trauma of India-Pakistan Partition.
Ali found that he could tap into their treasure trove of memories, of a nostalgia hatred and time could never erase. And so “Main Vaapas Aaunga” took form. Daydreaming, Ali adds, has become a source of sustenance for him.
"Some ideas, like an infection in the body, keep building and building. And more and more parts get added to that imagination. And (it) starts acquiring the shape of a story. And then it becomes something that has to be ejected from the system because I find myself talking about that story to everybody."
The director-writer says he can trace many of his ideas back to the train journeys he undertook as a student, travelling from his hometown of Jamshedpur to Delhi. There were also innumerable DTC bus rides while he was studying in Delhi University’s Hindu College.
"I've been on the train many times and being a young boy going to college in the train, I would invariably have some of the other girl in the compartment and then there would be this 'aankhon aankhon mein' kind of a thing.
"And then it was like, 'if we were to miss our train or if she was to miss her train over here in Kota or Ratlam or one of these stations that used to come, what would happen? What would she face? And then, if I were also to miss my train, then how would we find our way back?"
It’s this thread that probably led to “Jab We Met”, Ali’s most recalled film that stars Kareena Kapoor Khan as the ebullient Geet. A memorable sequence of the 2007 film is Geet and Aditya (Shahid Kapoor) stranded in Ratlam station and getting into a deserted town in the dead of night.
Was Ali a flirt as a youngster?
"I was not a flirt. I was a very committed boyfriend already. And I've been so. But khayal mein, tasavvur (imagination) mein toh...," the director said.
From his debut "Socha Naa Tha" to his latest "Main Vaapas Aaunga", which stars Naseeruddin Shah, Diljit Dosanjh, Vedang Raina and Sharvari and releases on Friday, Ali's films may appear completely different from each other on the surface. The two films bookend "Love Aaj Kal", "Rockstar", "Highway", "Tamasha" and "Jab Harry Met Sejal", each film different in mood but at their core all about relationships.
Can he, too, spot a running thread through his movies.
"Your observation would be right because a shopkeeper has to sell his wares and he will call them unique… "As a director, I would love if I leave no scent behind in any of my works. That all of them are unique and distinct from each other, I would love that. But there is a common thread, I guess, which I am unable to wipe out.”
According to Ali, he has made an effort to break some threads. After "Jab We Met", for instance, he tried not create a character that over-expresses through conversation.
There is another commonality in his films.
"There is a lack of a villain, so to speak. I find that there is no bad person in any of my films. And that's a trait and I don't know what to do about it because everybody who I have met in my life has not turned out to be exactly a bad person… people that were supposed to be bad people have turned out to be quite nice actually. And sometimes lonely."
What makes for a good film?
"The light has to go through everything. I feel that everything has to align in a certain vision…
"Someone, at the very beginning of my career, told me that ‘the tax that gets cut for the ticket is for entertainment. So your film must be entertaining’," he added.
