Main Vaapas Aaunga

As it turns out, Partition is now the safest address in Hindi cinema if you’re a filmmaker making a film about politics, about bigotry, and about the Hindu-Muslim wound the present government keeps raking up. To set this in the present day would mean inviting forms of censorship that could range from a notice to a ban. But that isn’t the case if you reach back to 1947, where the bloodshed is settled history and nobody can accuse you of inventing it. Sriram Raghavan did it last year with Ikkis, sending Dharmendra back to Sargodha after a lifetime, crafting a film that is essentially an indictment against the cruelty of war and the real price of bigotry. Now Imtiaz Ali sends an old man to the same town and uses the journey to say almost everything a Hindi film in 2026 is otherwise forbidden to say.

इश्क की ज्यादातर अमर कहानियां अधूरी ही रही हैं। रोमियो-जूलियट, लैला-मजनू, हीर-रांझा और इन कहानियों पर सिनेमाकारों ने खूब दिल भी हारा है। उन्हें पर्दे पर भी खूब उतारा है। अब इसी कड़ी में अधूरे प्यार की एक भावुक कहानी है इम्तियाज अली की नई फिल्म ‘मैं वापस आऊंगा’। अपनी फिल्मों में प्यार के अलग-अलग रंग बिखरने वाले इम्तियाज अली ने इस बार भारतीय इतिहास के सबसे दर्दनाक अध्याय रहे विभाजन की पृष्ठभूमि चुनी है, जिसके बहाने उन्होंने इस प्रेम कहानी में जंग, विस्थापन, अलगाव के दर्द को भी पिरो दिया है। ‘लव आज कल’ के अंदाज में अतीत और वर्तमान में घूमती यह कहानी है, इशर सिंह ग्रेवाल उर्फ कीनू (नसीरुद्दीन शाह) की। 95 साल के ग्रेवाल साहब दुनिया को अलविदा कहने की कगार पर हैं, पर जाना उन्हें पाकिस्तान के सरगोधा है, क्योंकि यह कीनू (वेदांग रैना) वहीं पैदा हुआ, जवान हुआ, इश्क में पड़ा। इसलिए, डिमेंशिया के कारण यादद्दाश्त के धोखा देने के बावजूद उन्हें याद है तो बस अपना प्यार अफसाना उर्फ जिया (शर्वरी वाघ)।

Two love stories spanning two eras is a running theme in Imtiaz Ali’s filmography. His latest, ‘Main Vaapas Aaunga’, a pre-Partition for ever-and-ever romance, juxtaposed against a commitment-phobic present-day couple—in which the girl and guy are doing the back-and-forth chancy-dancy thing, is also in the same zone. It also re-unites him with Diljit Dosanjh, the lead actor of their previous collaboration, Chamkila. Co-written by Ali and Nayanika Mahtani, the film opens with the Chandigarh-based 95-year old Ishar Singh Grewal (Naseeruddin Shah) desperate to get to Sargodha. His faculties are slipping, and he has no realisation that the town lies across the border, created in 1947 to carve India and Pakistan out of the subcontinent, leading to wholesale carnage and bloodshed.

“There behind barbed wire, on one side, lay India and behind more barbed wire, on the other side, lay Pakistan. In between, on a bit of earth which had no name, lay Toba Tek Singh.” Manto’s short story and its essence hit me like a truck while experiencing Imtiaz Ali’s poetic, Partition-era romantic-drama Main Vaapas Aaunga. Just like Toba Tek Singh, now lies Ishar Singh Grewal (Naseeruddin Shah) on his deathbed. His soul too seems stuck in the barbed wire between India and Pakistan. It can’t depart. He is grabbing on to see his pre-Partition city of Sargodha for one last time, to see Jiya/ Afsana for one last time. This girl of his youth smiles in his blurred dreams and says, “See, no. My chaand bali (earring) has fallen off somewhere. Will you find it for me?”