Imtiaz Ali on exploring love and travel and working with Shah Rukh Khan for the first time

When you think of Imtiaz Ali’s films, the two things instantly come to mind are love and travel. All his characters embark on a journey of self-discovery together. His last two films might not have been commercial hits, but his next film featuring Shah Rukh Khan and Anushka Sharma, Jab Harry Met Sejal holds a certain promise. Talking about love, trips and films, Imtiaz gets candid with us. Excerpts from the interview...

There’s a certain expectation always from an Imtiaz Ali film. How do you deal with this pressure to deliver?

I deal with it with shamelessness. It’s a unique gift that I have. I have no great expectations from myself. And for the others, who expect things from me as a filmmaker, I deal with all of it like a shameless man. My interest is to enjoy myself while doing work. The rest of it is incidental.

Having made so many love stories, how do you define love?

I do not define love. I don’t try to. I agree with people that when you are defining your relationship with anybody, you are also somewhere defining your relationship with yourself. I don’t understand what love is. I have tried, at different points in my life, to find out what it means to be in love. But now, I have given up on that. There’s a certain amount of affection, longing and desire, but love in itself is very confusing for me.

How do you connect love with a journey in all your movies?

Journey redefines a person. Once you are out of your own perspective, you don’t have a definition of yourself.

That’s what I feel. You can be anybody. You are usually defined by people who know you. We do role playing in our society. Once we are out of this space where we are constantly surrounded by people we know and love, we are done with the role playing and that’s when we discover and get in touch with ourselves. That is the only way of having a relationship with somebody else. That’s what my love stories are also about.

You are obsessed with the hero finding his calling while on a journey. Is it a reflection of your real life?

Yes! I have travelled a lot in my life and I’m happy about it. Being from a small town, you need to travel more than other people. Each of those travels has been an exuberant affair for me. Wherein I have discovered new places, new people, and especially discovered myself, which has been entertaining. I have also posed and pretended to be different people for my own entertainment and then realised later that I am perhaps a bit more of that than what people know me as in Jamshedpur or in my University. That exuberance reflects in the films I make.

When you pretended to be someone else, was it a person, who actually existed or an imaginary character?

Mostly, they were imaginary characters. When people ask me about what I do for a living, I intrigue them by saying I can’t reveal that. So they get curious about who I am. Sometimes, I pretend to be this secret service agent, sometimes a writer, sometimes a guy who’s running away from a place  Once, I pretended to be Charles Sobhraj! I was travelling by train and I refused to tell my fellow passengers my name. But after sometime, I said it’s Charles. That was way back in college.  

Do you feel the world around you changes every time you complete a journey?

Yeah, sure. I feel, I become very different each time. Maybe, almost unfairly different but again, like I said, change is the only constant.

Your last two films were emotionally draining and didn’t do as well at the box office. Jab Harry Met Sejal is more happy and fun. Did the failure change your course?

No, it’s not about the box office. What had happened once was that in some chat groups, where there were a lot of fans of Tamasha, there was a huge debate. I have to admit that Tamasha has some really hardcore terrorist-type fans. Someone criticised Tamasha and the other people, who were lambasting that poor chap told him that you need to be intelligent to understand Imtiaz Ali’s cinema. That set me thinking because I have never been part of the intelligent man’s club myself. I could see that my films were making groups for themselves in which I, myself might not be admitted. So I decided to take another route. Anyway, the reason I do different kinds of films is to learn, experience and make myself better. This time, I knew I had made some heavy films so I wanted to try something lighter.

How was your first meeting with SRK?

It was in London for a film festival. We all were hanging out and I saw Shah Rukh coming up a very narrow aisle somewhere in the hotel, with a drunk girl hanging on to him. He was dealing with her so gracefully without demeaning her. Gauri (Khan) was also with him and everybody was trying to deal with this crazy fan. He was particularly being nice to the girl. When he saw me, he stopped, and we had quite a long conversation even as the girl kept murmuring ‘Oh Shah Rukh, Oh Shah Rukh’ all over him. He was dealing with her like how one would deal with a scarf. He put her arm on one side of the shoulder and continued to talk to me. He asked me to come and tell him the stories of my films. It was just post Jab We Met.

How many films did you offer him then before JHMS?

I never offered him a film, really. But we met many times. Because we somehow belong to a similar world. We are people of similar backgrounds — whether it’s Delhi, theatre or even our University, we have a lot of things in common. Also, like Ranbir, his interest in stories and ideas is exemplary. With Shah Rukh, I always met him without any agenda. I didn’t offer him anything, neither did he ever ask me for anything. But one day, we felt that just because we discuss my films, it doesn’t mean that we can’t have a film together. So then we got Jab Harry Met Sejal!

Has your impression about him changed post this film?

It actually has changed. My impression of Shah Rukh now is that he’s a typical theatre actor. He holds the script and approaches a role in the same way that a theatre actor would. That, too, from Delhi theatre. There’s a certain body language and the way in which you deal with a certain character, role, or a story. He’s all about that. All the background work and thinking he does, his whole personality is that of a Delhi theatre actor. It is something very endearing for me to see that.

When you work with stars, somewhere do you feel guilty of not being able to give them a commercial blockbuster?

I feel the only reward isn’t money. There are much more valuable rewards than basic money. I hope that every film is an enriching experience for my actors. They can keep this experience for later. I don’t feel responsible for box office results, as long as I know my team and the cast had a good experience shooting the film.

Your first film had newcomers, but never post that...

It’s not been deliberate and it’s not the lasting decision. I am not averse to working with a newcomer and I hope to do so soon.

Do you ever see yourself working in a film which won’t have travel at all?

(Laughs) That will be really boring, I think but yeah, maybe someday!