Imtiaz Ali’s Main Vaapas Aaunga has seen a resurgence at the box office after a slow first week, and it’s all due to the audience’s push and word-of-mouth. As the Naseeruddin Shah, Diljit Dosanjh, Sharvari and Vedang Raina-starrer is now enjoying a good run, the team is basking in the success of it.
While Main Vaapas Aaunga focuses on a love story, it also tells the ordeal that people in Punjab had to go through during Partition. Ask Imtiaz Ali if he feels the film should be made tax free, especially in Punjab, and he says, “A lot of people have said that this is a story of Punjab, a story of India and also in a way of Bengal and other parts. If people feel that genuinely and if that comment of national interest is out, then there must be a process in these states to see if the film can be made tax free and we would be looking into it.”
Even though the film touches on the horrors of the Partition, it still tells it from a single point of view of Keenu, played by Vedang Raina. And Imtiaz reveals that it was his original vision. “I wanted to make this film from a very narrow point of view of this one romantic person, Keenu. Through his point of view, what he remembers, what he was thinking when he crossed over or when he wanted to go back to her, I retained that into the film. Everything has been picked up from that lens,” he says.
While MVA boasts an ensemble cast, Ali is particularly praising actor-singer Diljit Dosanjh’s performance. “The honesty with which Diljit has done this performance was not possible by any other actor. I needed this honesty to make this film true because his character is the one that provides the litmus test to the believability and the drama of this film. No other person, but Diljit could have done this, and I also owe it to Diljit for always encouraging me in this particular film. Even he’ll never be able to express how strongly he feels about this subject because it’s the story of his family, his land Punjab,” he says.
Sharing an incident where Dosanjh acted as a catalyst for one of the most hard-hitting point in the film, Ali informs, “I must thank him and Irshad (Kamil, lyricist) for encouraging me to make the last video of Kya Kamaal Hai. I had never done or seen anything of this sort, and I bounced this idea off everyone. Diljit was the one who said, ‘Ye to karna hi hai kyunki ye fir isko sabki film bana dega’.”