By Ritu Jha-
“Do patan ke bich mein sabut bacha na koi” [Caught between two stones, no one survives].
With that couplet from Kabir, filmmaker Imtiaz Ali described the events surrounding the death of singer Chamkila. Ali, known for blockbuster movies like “Jab We Met,” “Highway,” “Tamasha,” and “Rockstar.” Ali was one of the keynote speakers at SALA 2024 in Stanford, California, where he talked to indica about his recent biopic, “Amar Singh Chamkila,” the Punjabi singer who was mysteriously killed.
“Chamkila [the protagonist] became collateral damage,” Ali said. “It was not that he was a man without flaws. I think his story was, in a way, the story of Punjab itself. Because there is so much that is to celebrate in the culture of Punjab, and there is also so much to lament in the politics of Punjab and in the sociopolitics of Punjab in so many things that have always been historically happening which are devastating to Punjab.”
Asked about working on a controversial biopic and did he get what he wanted, Ali said, “I think the projection of Punjab in ‘Chamkila’ is exactly what I wanted. The point was to tell the story of one person and his relationship with music, to show all his flaws and to show the flaws of the time that he was living in and how he got between what he wanted to do and what the world was.”
Talking about the impact of Punjab’s music on a national and global scale, Ali said: “If there are seven songs playing on any radio channel, you will see that three of them would at any time be Punjabi. Even if you are in Maharashtra – or in any part of the country – there is much to celebrate. I feel that Chamkila’s story was Punjab’s story. He was affected by the events of the emergency and 1984. But much of it was not really the scope of the film. He was affected by the fact that he could not openly say whatever he had to say or to sing the kind of songs that he wanted to because there was a lot of religious and social advice being given to him, and guardrails being set around him.”
Ali said that many local women from Punjab who never have acted in films before did excellent work in “Chamkila.”
He told indica Punjab faces serious problems, including falling groundwater levels and a sharp rise in agricultural land of pesticides, insecticides, and other non-native chemicals.
Ali is a small-town boy who grew up in Jamshedpur. He did schooling in Patna, Bihar, and later in Jamshedpur, Jharkhand before moving to Delhi for higher studies, where he got into theater and also established Ibtida, the dramatics society of Hindu College that he founded in 1991.
“It’s 2024 and it’s still running in the college,” he said. “Ibtida is doing well and much better than during my time. I’m very proud of it.”
Asked on coming from a small town to his success story in Bollywood, Ali says, “It is very difficult to put your own journey in a sentence that can easily be understood by everybody. But the highlights that I see, the themes that I see in my life, are about the diversity of India. I feel the power of people, the power of which I feel retrospectively, having traversed through different cities and towns, places of different sizes, met people of different mentalities, and to have lived with all of them. I have taken from them various things, good and bad, making me somebody who has stories to tell the same people. And as far as the film industry is concerned, I feel that it has been a very encouraging space for me.”
Ali said that India’s film industry is the only place where he feels at home.
“A rank outsider with no connection at all to the film industry, I was made to feel welcome,” he said. “I felt I found other people like myself. Whether they were from film families or not, they were all dreamers and in some way drifters. In some ways they were people who were trying to say something important and also not taking themselves too seriously. I would be nowhere if the people in the film industry were not as supportive as they are. There are lots of misconceptions about it. I don’t say that there’s only good, but I also want to make sure to say that there’s not only bad; it’s a place where talent ultimately is respected.”
He says luck has also played a role.
“I also feel that I’m fortunate,” he said. “I’m from a small town. Because I had more distance to cover, I could meet different kinds of people and live in different cities. I’ve been in Delhi and I now live in Bombay. I’m from Jamshedpur in Jharkhand, and I’ve lived in Patna in Bihar. And I go to all these places now and I see people and they are as much mine as people who live with me in Bombay.”
Ali waxed patriotic when describing the diversity of India.
“I feel very warm about being Indian,” he said. “I think there is so much goodness and richness in the texture of India which one realizes only at a later part of life.”
Asked whether India retains this diverse texture even now, he said: “It will always be there. There is so much in India. The fabric of India can never be taken away.,. Some issues have always happened. They’ve come and gone. We don’t know exactly how it was to live in various eras that have passed, which we read about in history books. Every time will have its own problems. But it doesn’t mean that the bedrock of our foundation, which is India, is going to ever change that quickly. It’s so magnificent and so many thousands of years old that it can never be hijacked.”
The women in Ali’s films have unique characters and speak differently to the audience.
“Whatever I’m writing, the movies I’m making are not based on other movies; they are based on real life,” he said. “In real life, when you meet people, whether they are men or women, they have their own agencies, weaknesses, and strengths. I’ve seen women in a certain way in my own life, and that is how I can present them. I have not seen women dancing around trees. I have not seen women just losing their agency and depending upon the greatness of their men. These things I have not seen in my life, and therefore, I don’t project them. If you travel in India, you will see that most people who work on farms, or in any rural organization are women.”
On the advent of streaming services in India, and what it means for the traditional film industry, he said, “Everybody is dealing with the growth of technology in their own ways. I for one don’t think that the presence of OTT [subscription services] is a threat to filmmakers. I think it’s a boon because it gives another house for our creative output… But I am primarily, as a member of the audience and a filmmaker, a big screen man. I would like to make films for the big screen and watch them there. But the presence of the OTT is definitely an added benefit to me.”
