Imtiaz Ali: The Equaliser

AS A BOY HE would love to watch movies at the two theatres attached to Karim Mansion in Jamshedpur, where he lived with his aunt. He could go there whenever he wished, and watch films from the projectionist’s box. At 52 now, the boy, an eternal romantic, has become an expert on the pain and pleasure of Punjab. “It’s the land of opposites,” he says, “of deep spirituality and love, but also of violence and bloodshed.” The two strands of his favourite state come together in Amar Singh Chamkila, his new film on Netflix, on the singer who was shot dead at the height of his fame in 1988, along with his wife and two band mates.

The film is a throwback to the time that Punjab was wracked with terror­ism. But while he was researching it, Punjab saw the assassination of another singing star, Sidhu Moosewala. “It was violence of another kind, a gang war, and there was no trace of any revolutionary spirit in it.” Like Chamkila, Moosewala too was 27, like the great musicians of the Infamous 27 Club, Jim Morrison, Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin.

With Diljit Dosanjh playing Chamkila, the film traces his life as a man of a lower caste, from his initial ambition of becoming an electrician, to his emergence as the voice of Punjab, cheeky, flirty, naughty, but always contemporary. The film gets to the heart of Punjab as it was, and largely still is, vibrant, energetic but also foreboding and forgotten. “Virtually everyone in Punjab has one member of the family living outside India. Punjab is a shadow of what it once was,” he says.

“The 1980s was a grievous time for Punjab,” he says, “but it was a golden era for Chamkila’s music. He was making his best music at that time. He would write bold, ribald, semi-vulgar lyrics. He would write about the devar leching after his bhabhi in an artful way. There was great profundity in what he said—for instance, he would say if a guy gets a glimpse of a woman or her body, the woman doesn’t lose anything but the guy does.”

He brought back the village idioms and similes, he says, which is why even now Punjabis may love Moosewala and his generation of singers but their heart belongs to Chamkila. “He is like their secret, someone they don’t want to share with anyone else.”

The triumph of the movie, apart from Ali’s obvious fondness for the state, is the casting of Diljit Dosanjh, the Punjabi singer-actor who has an enormous fan following and needs no coaching when it comes to dialect or attitude. Ali is an actor’s director, infusing his leading men and leading ladies with so much of his own understanding of life, of character, of emotion that they become one with the part. His most famous collaborator is Ranbir Kapoor, who has often spoken of the transformative experience of work­ing with Ali, who would take him to Nizamuddin Dargah in Delhi and make him sit there for hours to absorb the spirituality for Rockstar (2011). Equally, he has enabled actors such as Kareena Kapoor Khan to shine in parts such as Geet in Jab We Met (2007), Deepika Padukone as Veronica in Cocktail (2012), and Alia Bhatt in the movie that made everyone sit up and take note of her Highway, in 2014.

They are large-hearted in Punjab, spirited. They have faced strife since partition, but they are magnanimous. There is a story in everyone, says Imtiaz Ali, filmmaker

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And Ali has created an ecosystem that sustains him and his ever expanding work. As Homi Adajania, who directed Ali’s screenplay in Cocktail says: “He narrated the basic story of the first half of Cocktail to me and then pro­ceeded to share a general outline, which his younger brother Sajid took forward and fleshed out into the screenplay and dialogues. Imtiaz graciously added a few of his touches to this as and when Sajid or Dinesh Vijan [the producer] approached him to do so, but I remem­ber that he was consumed with Rockstar as that was happening at around the same time.”

Rockstar acquired a cult following for its exceptional music, by AR Rahman, and completely immersive characteri­sation by Kapoor. Avinash Tiwary who acted in Laila Majnu (2018), which Ali wrote and which was directed by Ali’s brother Sajid, says: “When Imtiaz Sir speaks, you listen. A filmmaker whose stories are an exploration of human psychology and emotions, his sense of music, his understanding of human relations are out of this world. I am forever indebted to him for holding my hand through the process of Laila Majnu. The insights that he holds is something every artist aspires for, and I am blessed to have that in the early part of my career.”

ALI’S ONSCREEN women are memorable but it is his under­standing of the male psyche that is rare in Mumbai cinema. Vignettes from his movies illustrate this beautiful­ly. There is a scene in Love Aaj Kal (2009), where Saif Ali Khan, seeming playboy of the Western world, breaks down and cries in front of the fire alone in his room. Is it depression, regret, or just the novelty of being alone? There is a scene in Tamasha (2015), where Ranbir Kapoor has a meltdown in front of his girlfriend, changing from his usual polite self to a mad, uncontrolled avatar. And in Jab Harry Met Sejal (2017), an underrated romance starring a rundown Shah Rukh Khan, when the big tourist group leaves, the hero cannot wait to get out of his tie, a persistent symbol of servitude in Ali’s movies.

Ali’s characters are forever trapped in their circumstances, using some form of art to break free and hit the road. For Veera in Highway, it is the poetry of the road that draws her to her abductor and distances her from her uptight mid­dle-class existence; for Ved in Tamasha, theatre is a way to snap out of his corpo­rate tedium; and for the tour guide Harry in Jab Harry Met Sejal, it is the uncondi­tional love of a woman.

Though Ali developed his love of theatre in DBMS English School, in Jamshedpur, it was in Hindu College, Delhi, that it bloomed. He was part of Act One, the theatre society set up by NK Sharma, and he travelled through the country, experiencing the sights and smells of India—and also devel­oping a lifelong love for planes, trains and automobiles which his characters are forever taking on their unending journeys. It was on his second trip to Punjab with Act One that Ali first fell in love with Punjab, he says. “It was at the height of militancy in the state and we were travelling with plays. I remember going to a juicewala and ordering orange juice. He gave us two free, saying it was his privilege since we had come to the state risking our lives for peace.” When he returned to shoot Jab We Met, it led to new bonds, new relationships, new understanding. The people of Punjab, for him, are the best. “They are large-hearted, spirited, they have faced strife since Partition, but they are magnanimous. There is a story in everyone.”

Ali has been a successful director, who of late has also branched into streaming, with the successful She, a dark exploration of a woman’s sexuality, for Netflix, which he has co-written, as well as Dr Arora, on a small-town sex consultant for SonyLIV, which he has created. Both were direct­ed by his brothers Arif Ali and Sajid Ali, respectively. In both the series, Ali got to explore sexual intimacy in a more nuanced way than big-screen movies usually allow. Whether it is the small-town policewoman’s unfulfilled sexual needs in She or Dr Arora’s negotiation of sexual ignorance, Ali explores both without judgement, or queasiness.

The 1980s was a grievous time for Punjab. But it was a golden era for Chamkila’s music. He was making his best music at that time. He would write bold, ribald, semi-vulgar lyrics. He would write about the devar leching after his bhabhi in an artful way. There was great profundity in what he said, says Imtiaz Ali

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But he knows the taste of failure as well, as both Jab Harry Met Sejal and Love Aaj Kal 2 (2020) underperformed at the box office. Ali is philosophical about it, “Who gets to decide what is right or wrong for an audience? We’ve had films that are popular but also severely judged. There are no easy answers. There is a diabolical, two-faced aspect to society, which makes someone big and then sets the Ravana on fire. You make someone so great and then reduce him to ashes. It happened to Chamkila.”

Ali is one of a new breed of writer-di­rectors who came to Mumbai via Delhi, infusing a fresh new idiom and relata­bility to his characters, starting with the runaway bride in his first film Socha Na Tha (2005), starring Abhay Deol. Among others who came to Delhi via university or advertising were Anurag Kashyap, Shoojit Sircar, and Dibakar Banerjee.

His films, like that of his contempo­raries, brought more equality to Hindi cinema. If the serene Meera saves the volatile Jai in Love Aaj Kal, it is Mahabir who saves Veera in Highway. But it is the connection that Ali makes, and helps us appreciate, that make his characters unforgettable.

About The Author

Kaveree Bamzai

Kaveree Bamzai is an author and a contributing writer with Open

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