‘I was lucky there was no college theatre group when I formed Ibtida’

F ilm director and writer Imtiaz Ali, a Delhi University alumnus, visited his alma mater Hindu College, recently. He shared, with students, words of wisdom, and his journey from a DU student to a top league director in Bollywood.

Recollecting his student days, Ali who started Ibtida — The Dramatics Society of Hindu College, says, “I was lucky that there was no (college) theatre group when I formed Ibtida. I kept rolling from one thing to another and didn’t know that it will become my profession. I used to direct plays in my school. I’m still doing the same thing, but now I am getting paid to have fun.”

His presence on the campus made the students curious to know how he was as a student in his college days. Ali laughingly revealed: “I was arrogant. But with times, things change.”

In the present times when youngsters often succumb to depression, one of his former teachers asked how he deals with failure. “I’m not prone to depression. [I feel] there’s always something better in life. In the initial days, I used to write scripts and stories, and keep (myself) busy. I wrote the script of Jab We Met (2007) back then,” recollects the director about his struggling phase in the film industry, before Jab We Met became a hit.

And, Ali doesn’t mind that he lived an unplanned life: “For me, it wasn’t an instant success. It took time. And later when I got offers, I had a lot of things with me. My life was unplanned, and I would not ask anyone to follow my example. But it’s like, (in life) what you seek is seeking you.”