Filmmaker Imtiaz Ali has said that the response to Main Vaapas Aunga, particularly seeing youngsters sit quietly and empathise with its story, has been the best 55th birthday gift he could have received.
Ali’s latest Main Vaapas Aaunga, starring Vedang Raina, Sharvari, Diljit Dosanjh and Naseeruddin Shah, hit theatres on June 12.
“There is this feeling that what I wanted to say has been communicated... I have never seen an audience watching the film so quietly. In all of my successful films also, people have this habit of fidgeting here and there. This time, they’re really paying attention, the younger people are paying attention,” he told PTI.
“I have said it many times that the present generation feel a little lost because they don’t find sustaining love, something they can just hold in their hearts, that old-fashioned love, like old music. That longing, that yearning, that holding one person and being with that person, they are relating to that,” Ali added.
Ali recalled how reports of war, displacement and refugees prompted him to think about the lasting impact of Partition.
“I kept reading that there is some destruction, there is some battle and there are more and more people getting abandoned, becoming refugees and getting on to the verge of existence... I couldn't help but think that this is exactly what happened in Partition.”
Ali is known for films like Love Aaj Kal, Rockstar, Highway, Tamasha and Jab We Met.
In Main Vaapas Aaunga, Naseeruddin Shah plays an ageing man who is unable to get over the memories of a woman he loved and lost during the Partition of India in 1947. As he lies on his deathbed, longing for one final reunion, his grandson (Diljit Dosanjh) attempts to piece together the unfinished love story his grandfather is desperately trying to recount.
Sharvari stars as the younger version of Shah’s lost love, while Vedang Raina essays the younger version of Shah’s character.