Imtiaz Ali: I revisit Delhi in my films because Hindi is very interest

There's a popular stereotype of Delhi in Hindi films - wide roads, people speaking with a Punjabi accent etc. But in 'Tamasha,' Imtiaz Ali explored a different facet of the capital - life in corporate Gurgaon. Through a lead character stuck in corporate drudgery in Gurgaon's shining, glass-fronted buildings, Imtiaz discusses conformity, rebellion and whether that 'modern' lifestyle is as liberating as it's perceived to be.


Parts of your last film 'Tamasha' have been shot in the capital, and Delhi keeps coming into your movies. But you've only been to college here. Why do you keep coming back to the city?
The corporate, new Delhi, which is largely in Gurgaon, the thousands of young men and women who work in those tall glass-fronted buildings, and who have a very upwardly mobile, slick life and they go to Cyber Hub to party at night - that crowd is part of Tamasha. We see that Delhi a lot, and I have not seen that city in my films before. The reason why I keep coming back to Delhi a lot is because we make films in Hindi, and Hindi is very interesting in Delhi, I feel. There are various aspects to Hindi, various accents, it becomes very rich. What I like about Delhi is that in one frame, it's very easy to see the old and the new coexist.

This type of life in Gurgaon came up some time after you left Delhi - when have you experienced it?
I kept coming back to Delhi all the time. I have been in Delhi after college a lot. And I've noticed it - my friends have worked in the corporate world of Gurgaon as it came up, and so that's how I became familiar with it. In college, I went to Gurgaon seven-eight times - and of course, there was not a single glass-fronted building there then. But even now, for instance, I have shot so much of Rockstar and Love Aaj Kal here in Delhi, and that was when I discovered the city also. Because when I'm making a certain movie, I'm here for six months a year. Apart from making my own movie, I'm also getting subliminal information about the city, which features in my next film.


How has the Gurgaon backdrop added to the story?
The story of Tamasha is that somebody touches you with love and breaks you out of your mechanical mould. We have a character who's become robotic because he's very used to not listening to the call of his heart. And somebody comes along and reminds him of who he is, and the struggle he goes through to become who he really is and who she'd like him to be. Not that I look down upon the corporate world, but we see this gentleman working in a field that he doesn't enjoy, and coming across in that work as a mediocre worker, and not enjoying that, and having to work very hard and run very fast to stay at the same place. Therefore the backdrop of Gurgaon was very suitable for me.

That's extremely interesting, because if you spoke to anyone from the actual milieu you're talking about - someone working in one of those glass-fronted Gurgaon buildings - she/he would be very angry with you for calling her/his life mechanical, because that life is all about the self and the individual.
Haan, so I haven't - in this movie, I have not tried to show all of them in a certain way, I've just followed that one character. And that one character will have his own story and will be set to a backdrop. For instance, if I make a movie like Jab We Met and if I talk about a girl who lives in Bhatinda, it doesn't mean that all girls who live in Bhatinda want to run away and get married and live in Manali.

Yes, but when we think of the corporate world, we think grey, cement, drudgery - but the corporate world doesn't really think of itself like that. The work hard, party harder, DINK sort of life - they see it as a very individualistic life, and it's interesting that you as a storyteller find an element of the mechanical in it.
There's a certain format... I see a format developing. For instance, a doctor or an engineer or a film director is supposed to behave in a certain way. And anybody who loses his individuality to belong to that format, I feel, is living a mechanical life. This character (of Ranbir Kapoor as Ved), at any rate, is doing so. He happens to be a marketing guy in a telecom firm, and he does want to belong to this format, and he's not listening to the call of his individuality.

You started working 20 years ago (with TV) - at that point, working in a firm, earning a salary, not doing what your dad did, and living alone in a 2BHK with whoever you wanted to live with would have been rebellion. Today, that rebellion...
...Is conformity. And that's what happens. If you go to Israel, you'll see that people want to live in large communities. They have gone through the experience of having individual homes and living the 'alone' life, the Western way. Now you'll see people living in kibbutz (a communal settlement). Now a lot of people in India, especially in the cities, are going back to the joint family because they get comfort over there. And that I think is breaking conformity.

So, going back to a 'conservative' set-up - because you see joint family, you think 'conservative'...
Yeah, but then, again, if you think joint family = conservative... You just have to be flexible to your own thoughts, listen to your own thoughts. You shouldn't care about whether this is supposed to be conservative or not. Just by believing everything that is called conservative is conservative and is regressive, is actually a thought which is very mechanical - it is a conformist thought, according to me. I mean, I'm going to do the rebellion the way I want to do it, right? I'm not going to find out first what rebellion is and then draw out a format and then belong to that. Then I'm not being rebellious. Then I'm just trying to belong to the format of being rebellious.

Is there a templatised rebellion - that this is not the life our parents lived, so it should be ours?
Haan, ho sakta hai. Main yeh nahin kahunga ki saare log aise hain, but aisa bahut logon ke saath mumkin hai. Khaas kar ke jo iss film ka character hai, Ved Vardhan Sahni, uski toh zindagi yehi hai.

That this should be my world, regardless of what my instinct says.
Exactly. Regardless of what my instinct says, this is the life I have to live, this is the cool way of living, this is what I want. I'm going to enter my office only with a Starbucks coffee mug, because that's how an upwardly mobile young executive has to look.

You are from Bihar, though - from cities that were actually then small towns, like Jamshedpur.
Ab bhi Jamshedpur small town hi hai!

Do you get the feeling sometimes that even as of today, perhaps, people who come from cities that are not urban megalopolises like Delhi and Gurgaon, they have a slightly richer experience, more to draw upon?
See, born and brought up in Jamshedpur, living in Patna, living in smaller towns and cities and then coming to Delhi, and then going to Mumbai and then seeing the rest of the world - that has given me a terrific, terrific advantage. I have been fortunate to see various styles of living, various types of people and their sensibilities, and so I can draw upon any of those experiences to enrich my frames, give culture to my stories. And more than that, I'm also lucky that I come from the north, where Hindi is the spoken language. Since I'm making movies in Hindi, I have an advantage over those people who come from places where Hindi is not their mother tongue. Both these advantages, I feel, I enjoy in my work as a filmmaker.

On that note, many people, especially the young - the more urban and affluent their surroundings, sometimes, the less Hindi they know, despite having grown up in Delhi or Mumbai.
That's very strange - it's very disappointing that we are losing language. I feel that whether it's Hindi or any local language that people speak in a certain region of the country - to lose that is a very big loss. It's a resource loss, I feel. And if you do not know good Hindi, it doesn't mean that you will know great English. On the other hand, I've seen that people who are good with languages, for instance, people who are good with Hindi, are more prone to having better English, because they respect language. And in the metros, I feel that, as you point out, people don't have good language at all. None of the languages they speak, they feel they have a command over.

Is it an urban homogenization of experience - the mall, the coffee shop, these are the sources of recreation for everyone?
But Dilli mein har insaan ko Hindi aati hai na. Aani chahiye, kam se kam. Woh kyun nahin Hindi mein baat karenge? Yehi hota hai template wala - kyunki hum American movies mein dekhte hain, ki wahan ke log coffee shops mein angrezi mein baat karte hain, 'to-go' (takeaway) - iss tarah ke terms use karte hain - toh hum bhi un terms ko use karne ki koshish karte hain. So much so, that sometimes, when a waiter is talking to me, pata hai yeh kahin Shimla ka rehne wala hai, ya Dilli ka, ya Uttar Pradesh ka, par jab main usse Hindi mein kuch bolta hoon, toh woh aqsar angrezi mein jawab de raha hota hai. Toh main kehta hoon, 'Yaar, tera naam Dhyan Chand hai, tu England mein thodi na paida hua hai? Tu Hindi mein kyun nahin baat karta?' Usko lagta hai ki main agar Hindi mein baat karunga toh kuch kam ho jaunga. I think we need to take more pride in our languages.