On Sunday, Imtiaz Ali’s session at Kathakar – International Storytellers Festival continued for over three hours at Sunder Nursery, turning into a partial concert as his fans sang, danced, took photos, and passed letters to Imtiaz. Mohit Chauhan and Imtiaz also joined the audience as they broke into song.

Towards the end of the evening, around midnight, it was Imtiaz’s turn to narrate a story.

With a disclaimer, “It is part fact and part fiction,” Imtiaz shared a story of love, loss, and redemption, triggering many awws, sighs, and tears. However, he asked the audience not to record any audio or video because “some things should just be between us.”

“Tough times are always a part of life, drama, and every personality. If you want to tell a real story, you can’t avoid showing tough situations. However, I want to show life, and in the life I have seen, there are mental traumas and difficult phases. I feel that these issues should be spoken about more.“

Discussing Highway (2014), Imtiaz said that this story idea was even older than Socha Na Tha (2005, Imtiaz’s directorial debut). Imtiaz shared that when he was in college and travelling from Jamshedpur to Delhi, they crossed Chambal. He was sitting near the train door with a female friend and when the TT asked him to shut the door and he refused.

The TT told him, “Ye Chambal ghaati ka ilaka hai, aur gaadi ruk-ruk ke chal rahi hai. Agar iss ladki ko kisi dacoit ne kheech liya, aap zindagi bhar khud ko maaf kar paoge?” Imtiaz told the audience, “It made me realize how narrow our experiences are. And from here came the idea – what if a girl is taken away from her life, will she want to come back?”

Imtiaz said, “Highway was a film with dacoits, but I didn’t want it to be A-rated because I really wanted young boys and girls to watch it. Usmein characters bahut aggressively bolte hain, lekin woh gaali nahi dete hain. And Randeep’s (Hooda) acting! Gaali ke bagair woh aggression lana zyada mushkil hota hai.”

Talking about Highway’s soundtrack, Imtiaz shared, “Highway was supposed to have only one song, that one lullaby, and I was not approaching Rahman sir because I thought how can I approach a music director for one song. But he said if you want me to do it, then I will do it. Finally, Highway had more songs than Rockstar; it had 13 songs. There were a lot of situations that were silent where we used songs later. There were no (separate) song sequences.”

Imtiaz said that even after so many years of Tamasha (2015), people still come to him and say that they left their job after watching the film. Recalling a particular incident at a Mumbai cinema when he went to see the audience response to Tamasha, he said, “A woman came to me and said, ‘You should have made this film earlier. Ab toh bahut der ho gayi hai.’ The entire reaction to Tamasha can be ascertained from this one line. At some point, people should make a decision that can change the ending of their story.”

"A lot of people come to me and say, ‘Aapki film dekh kar maine naukri chhor di.’ Whenever someone says this, I feel that they should do well in their profession. It should not be like they come looking for me and say, ‘Iss aadmi ki wajah se maine naukri chhor di,’" he joked.

He added, “More power to those people who have taken the decision to change their life. Your life is in your hands, and there is no other way that it works other than how you make it work. From the bottom of my heart, I wish and pray for the best for such people.”

From Socha Na Tha to Love Aaj Kal, Rockstar and Tamasha - Imtiaz's film songs are as popular as his characters. Imtiaz shared that he is not a fan of how songs suddenly appear in films, as if the story has to wait for the song to get over, and he tries to avoid that in his films. “I used to find it very silly when a song breaks in, and suddenly, all laws of physics are sidelined. Suddenly, music appears from somewhere, and people who are not able to talk properly suddenly become great singers. I'm the kind of audience that would make fun of it. I want to have songs in my films, and I have struggled a lot with this in my films, figuring out how to include songs so that it is not jarring."