Imtiaz Ali recollects meeting Chamkila’s close friend who had cursed the singer

Mumbai, April 12 (IANS) Auteur Imtiaz Ali, who is receiving a lot of positive responses for his recently released streaming film ‘Amar Singh Chamkila’, shared that he met Chamkila’s close friend Tikki, who accompanied him on dholak. 

The filmmaker shared that Tikki told him that he once cursed Chamkila to die.

The movie is based on the lives of Punjabi artist Amar Singh Chamkila and his wife Amarjot Kaur, whose songs became massive hits in the 1980s.

The director shared interesting insights about the movie, including how he convinced Diljit Dosanjh to play Chamkila, the challenges Parineeti Chopra faced in recreating Amarjot’s music, and much more.

Imtiaz told IMDb during ‘On The Scene’: “When I spoke to Diljit, I assumed that since he is a musician, he would have heard about Chamkila from his childhood, especially being from the same area as Chamkila. So he knew everything about Chamkila. When I spoke to him for the first time, I found out that he had already made a film loosely inspired by Chamkila’s life events.”

“However, I had specific knowledge because I had conducted thorough research. I listened to stories and met people who knew Chamkila and Amarjot 36 years ago when they were alive. I met Tikki, who played the dholak and was Chamkila's close friend. He was a mercurial character who greatly influenced Chamkila,” he added.

“I met Tikki several times. He became emotional and shared things with me that he later regretted or corrected. This was because I met him on multiple occasions. He even mentioned that he had cursed Chamkila to die. So for me, research involved meeting the people Chamkila had encountered and visiting places where Chamkila had lived, such as the office space in Ludhiana where all the artists and singers congregated. As my interest grew, I met more people in Punjab. It's interesting because Chamkila had a knack for entertaining the masses, and understanding what works with the masses is a quality all artists and filmmakers would love to possess.”

When asked what draws him towards actors who are artists, the director replied, “There have been artists in my films. I don’t know whether I do it because I am a writer and director. But I also feel interested in the lives of those people who don’t toe the line, so to speak, and they do something unexpected that makes their lives more dramatic for cinema.”