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Director Imtiaz Ali said that he has it ‘on the record’ from a family member of Amar Singh Chamkila that the late singer had a child by his first wife, Gurmail Kaur, even after he had seemingly separated from her and married Amarjot Kaur. Chamkila and Amarjot were gunned down by masked assassins in 1988; their murders remain unsolved. Their story was dramatised by Imtiaz in his latest film, Netflix’s Amar Singh Chamkila.
In an interview with News18, Imtiaz spoke about gathering background information about the late singer, and addressed the complicated relationship that he shared with the two women in his life. “He had another child with Gurmail after having a child with Amarjot. The circumstance of that has been explained to me by Chamkila’s sister. I’ve it on record and I had written a scene about it also but had to cut it down because it was somehow a bit less relevant than the ones that were already there,” the filmmaker revealed.
He also explained why Gurmail’s character wasn’t given much prominence in the movie. “I couldn’t show too much of her in the film because that part of Chamkila’s life was hidden from Amarjot and the whole world. It’s only later in the film that we revealed that he has another wife. I paper-edited the film a lot in order to bring it to the duration that it has today. But I agree that there’s a lot that could have been discovered in their relationship,” he said.
He said that Chamkila was six years younger than Gurmail, and when they first got married, she would ferry him around on a bicycle. In the film, it is shown that Chamkila kept his marriage with Gurmail a secret from everybody, including Amarjot. But he tied the knot with Amarjot to preserve their professional partnership, which could’ve ended had they remained unmarried and kept touring around Punjab.
In interviews, Gurmail has spoken about how her life was impacted after Chamkila’s passing, which left her penniless as he was the sole breadwinner of the family. She said that she used to interact with both him and Amarjot often, and that all three of them were together just a couple of days before Chamkila and Amarjot were killed. Gurmail said that she had four children with Chamkila, two of whom died when they were young. Chamkila had two children with Amarjot, with only one son – Jaiman – having survived.
Starring Diljit Dosanjh and Parineeti Chopra, Amar Singh Chamkila debuted to positive reviews on Netflix on April 12.
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