13 June,2026 08:44 AM IST | Mumbai | Mayank Shekhar
(L-R) Naseeruddin Shah and Diljit Dosanjh in ‘Main Vaapas Aaunga’
Every film must make you think/do something. This one had me click on Pamela Rooks's movie, A Train to Pakistan (Prime Video) that I'd skipped, years ago (1998). There's a train from Pakistan, ferrying death, in Imtiaz Ali's Main Vaapas Aaunga (MVA).
It's a moment that'd be even harder to take - "Banda bande ko kha raha hai (man's eating his own)" - if, like the rest of the movie, it wasn't delivered to us so subtly, poignantly.
In equal parts, lyrical and powerful, MVA is a film that makes us realise you can still portray India's partition, without seeming partisan. And that it's possible to look, straight-up, at the deepest human wounds, while healing it with young love and passionate longing, alongside.
Also, backed by producers with courage/conviction - it reconfirms Imtiaz as a genuinely free-spirited, unfettered, writer-director, mastering the best of all arts (music, photography, production design), doing what he loves most - which is a romance of its own kind.
As with the subject of his film itself. Which is what, exactly? Indulge me, so we can play some fan-fiction. Consider another recent movie, Sriram Raghavan's war-drama, Ikkis (2026). Take the doddering old man (Dharmendra) in it - who goes back to college in Lahore, and visits Pakistan for the first time since Partition.
There's a suggested backdrop, throughout, about his childhood sweetheart, across the border, named Husna (after Piyush Mishra's ditty).
He yearns for her still. What if that film fell into a full-on flashback of how he and Husna met, yet parted; unrequited love in the times of political separation, as it were.
There must be many such stories - some bombastically recreated (Gadar), and not so (Veer Zaara). MVA is one of them. But unique in its own right. Ikkis, incidentally, starred Agastya Nanda, who debuted as lead in Zoya Akhtar's The Archies (2023).
We saw this movie's hero, Vedang Raina, likewise, first, as Reggie Mantle, in the same comic book fantasy. Opposite him is the effervescent Sharvari.
Together, in this period romance, they look the fresh, soft couple, that should've always been together - sincere, kind, but sassy; deeply besotted, equally playful.
MVA is a film from the PoV of Diljit Dosanjh's character, in the present tense, discovering, along with the audience, this long-lost love story of his ailing grandfather.
There's something so meditative about Diljit on the big screen, in general - even in a sneak peep, he makes his easygoing presence worthwhile; almost, always.
He plays a Londoner, Gen Z type bloke - as non-committal about his work as his love-interest. Through his own grandfather, you can tell, he's simultaneously finding himself. He brings humour to the film.
Imtiaz has, of course, dealt with inter-generational contrasts in loyalty/attachment, with Love Aaj Kal in 2009, and 2020. The latter was his last theatrical release.
That film felt flimsily floating on the surface. There's the heaviness of Partition that gives MVA the weight to emotionally sink in.
Besides Diljit, what also unites MVA and Imtiaz's last romantic musical, Amar Singh Chamkila (2024, Netflix), is a stellar AR Rahman soundtrack, to Irshad Kamil's words, that must grow upon replay.
Plus, incredible groundwork on scripting - from the Partition Museum in Amritsar to âBack to Roots', an archival agency in Lahore. This may be a rare pic, where a researcher (Jassi Sangha) is separately mentioned in the opening credits.
Even the setting, Sarghoda, in Pakistan, feels seen - surely, Jassi's been? There's enough material to unpack worth a re-watch, already.
India, Pakistan, respectively, got independence on August 15 and 14, 1947. I only learnt from this film that the borders were approved on August 17!
Humans turned into monsters in the interim - how else do you displace, uproot homes and lives, over religion, without killing, maiming millions, as a result.
The generation that faced it is pretty much gone. Only the puss remains. A survivor, still alive, in this film, is a Sikh gent in death bed.
Naseeruddin Shah, 75, plays this 95-year-old. Dementia's set in. The only vague yet indelible memory he has left is of his youth, and the girl he loved. It's viscerally heartbreaking to see this old man suffer.
This is Naseer, right off the back of Made in India: A Titan Story, where he killed it as JRD Tata. He's undoubtedly a national treasure. Also, at the stage of his legacy, where a film must mean more to him than simply a part.
MVA essentially examines racial memory. Wherein you aren't scratching an old wound, if the intention is closure. That's what his character seeks. I guess that equally helps for a society to move on; memetic evolution, so to say.
Several years ago, I asked Imtiaz why he hadn't attempted genres beyond romance - like, say, Yash Chopra, who also made a political drama (Dharmputra), early on; let alone Deewar.
Imtiaz said he wasn't done yet. True. This is his most devastatingly political film, made with such care, that no trigger warning's required.
What else was drawing borders between Hindus, Sikhs, Muslims, if not a vile, dangerous political act.
They were all Punjabis. They still are.
