Page 60 - Travel + Leisure India & South Asia (January 2020)

THE

LIST Imtiaz A li Romancing the Road

2019-20 Filmmaker, explorer, and Travel + Leisure India & South
Asia A-List member, Imtiaz Ali likes to be spontaneous
FILMMAKER in his travels. From exploring offbeat destinations to

interacting with locals, Ali’s personal expeditions often
find themselves woven into his inspiring film plots.
BY PRIYANKA CHAKRABARTI

What role does travel play in
your creativity?
I discover a different
personality of mine each time
I travel. And that new persona
looks at stories and people in
a new way. Many of my stories
have come to me while I’ve
been on a journey. In fact,
that’s why my films always
have an underlying element
of travel in them. It’s not a
coincidence.

Tell us about your most
memorable travel experience.
It was a trip that I took when
I was in the seventh or eighth
grade. I had to take my
grandmother from Kolkata
to Jamshedpur. It was the
simplest of trips, but we got
on the wrong train, which was
going only till Kharagpur. It was
the middle of the night when
we realised this blunder. My
poor grandma! I got her out
of the train on the tracks
because the Steel Express,
which went till Kolkata, had
incidentally stopped next to
our stationary train in the
middle of nowhere, and I
thought it was a good chance
for us to switch trains. The
moment I got her onboard the
right train, it started moving
and she started screaming—
all our luggage was still on
the tracks. I somehow put
everything up and jumped
onboard. As I say this, I realise
there are so many shots in my
films that have been inspired
by that moment.

Were there any other personal
travel encounters that made it
into your films?
In my previous film (Jab Harry
Met Sejal), I shot in Portugal a
lot, and many of those places
were ones that I had visited as
a tourist. I had gone there for

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