Director Imtiaz Ali recently discussed the appreciation that has come the way of his latest release, the Diljit Dosanjh-starrer Amar Singh Chamkila, which debuted on Netflix in April. The director reacted to the film’s song “Ishq Mitaye” being compared to “Ye Duniya Agar Mil Bhi Jaaye To,” from Guru Dutt’s Pyaasa.
The filmmaker said that Chamkila and Guru Dutt’s characters are poles apart, even while their music is considered political. Asked about “Ishq Mitaye” in an interview with News18, he said, “It has the feeling of, as you say, Guru Dutt, that ‘yeh duniya agar mil bhi jaaye toh kya hai’, but I also feel that it has positivity. It is not ‘jala do, jala do, jala do…yeh duniya’, because the character of the poet in Pyaasa was different from the character of Chamkila in this film.”
“Chamkila was an all accepting man. Chamkila never criticised the world because he was also aware that the world has given him everything, so he didn’t say that the world is unfair. He took his chances, he took whatever he could get, he was very insecure for it, but he was not a complainer, he was not a whiner,” he added.
Imtiaz Ali’s Amar Singh Chamkila released on Netflix to mostly positive reviews by film critics and audiences last month, and has become one of the most discussed films of the year. The film is based on the life ‘Elvis of Punjab’, the controversial Punjabi folk musician Amar Singh Chamkila. His songs were a commentary on village life, drug abuse, guns, extra marital affairs, dowry, alcoholism and matters of Punjabi masculinity. However, his lyrical content was considered vulgar. He was shot dead along with his wife in the village of Mehsampur in Punjab, in the year 1988.
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