Imtiaz Ali: 'I feel that entertainment is the way of taking you away from your immediate reality'

In the last almost two decades, Imitiaz Ali' s films have told stories that are real, relatable, with very close-to-life, yet wildly optimistic characters, whose reel-lives are, most of the time, inspired by real-life.

They say that the best storytellers are ardent observers first, and Imtiaz spent quite a few of his impressionable years as a student journeying on trains, observing people, absorbing his surroundings. And that went on to become a significant part of most of his narratives in his later life (his films from 2005 to 2022 including Jab We Met , Rockstar , Highway , Tamasha , Love Aaj Kal and others). Imtiaz’s latest dramedy Dr. Arora- Gupt Rog Visheshagya is one such.

As a young student, sitting at the window seat of long-distance trains passing by small towns of the hinterland, he had realised that the most advertised product or service in those areas was that of local sex doctors and that intrigued him. He would be left wondering what it would be like inside the clinics of such doctors, what would it be to have those ailments and live in those small north Indian towns.

And in the last two years, the storyteller in Imtiaz, developed a web series for Sony Liv and poured all that intrigue, social awkwardness and humour that he had imagined over the years travelling through those towns, right into it.

In an exclusive interview with Firstpost, the filmmaker chats about train journeys, his younger brother Sajid Ali, his work and more. Excerpts…

Train journeys have always been an important part of your films and sometimes the physical journey has been almost symbolic of an internal one faced by your protagonist. As a student of Delhi University in the early 90s, you frequently travelled from Jamshedpur to Delhi and later to Mumbai. How did it influence you?

There were these three wonderful trains - Utkal Express was one, then there was Neelanchal Express and Muri - Amritsar Express was the other - from Jamshedpur to New Delhi. In those days, we students would never get reservations. We used to get on these trains and go on for hours and hours without a reserved seat. So, there was no option but to meet people and make friends, so that we are not thrown out of the train at the next station. Then it was also about meeting people to get some of their food because the families that would travel with us would always travel with food and as students, we had nothing when we were going back from our hostel to our homes, so we would try to get friendly with them. And that is where I realised that if I wanted to get into the bedroom of a family they would never allow a stranger, yet in a train, you could see women, men, old and young people, all sleeping openly, eating openly, talking and interacting openly. And that, you could watch them and you could be with them and be a part of their lives for that brief moment. That kind of social activity was never possible otherwise in our regular lives. So, for me travelling in trains was not only a way of getting out of the city, but it was also to get into the lives of so many people. I felt greatly entertained by that, which is why many of my stories go back to that situation. I long for it, you know. I feel that entertainment is the way of taking you away from your immediate reality. So for me to go away from my immediate reality was to get onto a train where I could be anybody I wanted to be, because no one knows me and I could be with those people that I don’t hang with every day of my life.

You have worked with your younger brother Sajid Ali earlier too in Laila Majnu where he was the director and you were the writer. The case is similar in Dr Arora- Gupt Rog Visheshagya. What made you choose him again along with debutant director Archit Kumar to work on this series?

Sajid and I have this clear equation right from the start - I had told him initially that since I have come into the film industry before you, so we will never work when you need to work with me, we will only work together when I need to work with you. So while doing Laila Majnu and now when making the web show Dr Arora- Gupt Rog Visheshagya, I realised that I needed Sajid. I knew that I needed Sajid because he has this quirky sense of humour and not just that, he’s great with actors and great with music. I thought that he would be the kind of director that I really needed to do scenes with perhaps even better than I would do. So I got him on board and I also got Archit on board. When I hired Archit as the other director, as one of the two directors for this web show, Dr Arora- Gupt Rog Visheshagya I did not know that he is not only from my college Hindu, in Delhi University, but also from the theatre group, Ibtida, that I had started in my college while I was a student. And it is to his dignity that he never spoke about it till many many months later. One day he said Sir, by the way, I am also from Hindu college and Ibtida, the dramatics society. We felt very at home with both these extremely talented directors. I know that with the effort they have put in to turn this contemporary fantasy into a show of a flavour is great and that they will do very well in life and I wish them the best.

While all your films have been loved by fans and critics and also raked in the moolah, there were a couple of films like Tamasha, Love Aaj Kal, that had a tepid response initially. How do you look at those films of your career that didn’t do that well?

Sometimes you have a kind of interaction with an audience member that really gives you a very different perspective about the work that you do. All my movies are equally precious to me but I feel that a filmmaker has to walk through different paths to reach where he has to reach. I can’t take the shortcut of success after success. The first thing is that success is not guaranteed and the second is that I want to learn many things. Sometimes I want to go into spaces where I do not know everything, so that I can learn. Whether I might make a mistake and then that movie did not turn out as well or as successful as I would have liked it to be, at least I have the confidence that I did what I wanted to do, did what I thought was interesting and was a new learning experience. So as a result of it, my next work can be better next time, that is how I look at it.

You have said earlier that you like watching your films in the theatre on the first day just to gauge people’s reaction or to get a feel of their reaction to your work. Could you share an anecdote or some incident that you faced during one such show?

Sometimes people tell you things that really stump you or really make an indication as to what you might have done in your life or which way you are travelling. For instance, one time after watching the first show of Tamasha, in a theatre, I stepped out and there was a group of people that recognised me and they began talking to me about the film. And some people were praising me like you would tend to do when you are in front of the person you are talking about. That is how I presume people would behave. I distinctly remember a lady coming up to me that time. She was very serious, it was almost as if she had been crying inside the theatre. She came up to me and she told me, ‘You should have made this movie earlier, Ab Toh Bahut Der Ho Gayi’. After saying this she just walked away. And I was stumped. I just stood and looked at her as she was walking away and at that moment I suddenly realised that she was talking about her personal life. Something in the movie had touched her to such an extent, to make her regret the choices that she made in her life.

Debarati S Sen is a consultant journalist and writer who writes on music, culture, theatre, films, OTT and more. Instagram: @DebaratiSSen

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