Vijay Varma says he had to ‘up my game’ to work with Naseeruddin Shah: ‘He has played Ghalib; I had lost my lehja’

It helped that Varma shared screen space with his longtime idol Naseeruddin Shah, who’s no stranger to playing poets on screen and stage. “I was playing ball with an actor who’s played Ghalib and several other shayars on screen. So, I had to up my game and get myself upto speed. It was one of the most enduring learning experiences for me,” says Varma.

What didn’t help was that they shot in temperatures below 10 degrees in Uttar Pradesh. “It was tough because shayari doesn’t roll off my tongue so easily. And it was very cold. How do you do shayari while shivering? But I love a good challenge. And I’m glad Vibhu threw that kind of a challenge at me. I had enough support of a producer who ran with the idea of casting me and putting me out there in this light,” says Varma, lauding ace fashion designer Manish Malhotra, who’s turned producer with Gustaakh Ishq under his new banner Stage 5 Productions.

Another person on set who was no stranger to poets was director Vibhu Puri, having helmed two short films on poets’ lives in the past. His 2004 documentary Chauras Chand was based on the revolutionary 20th-century Punjabi poet, Pash. His 2006 short, Chabiwali Pocket Watch, also set in Old Delhi like Gustaakh Ishq, revolves around an ageing Urdu poet. The film fetched Puri a Special Jury Prize at the National Awards.

“I love poetry, poets, and the life that a poet loves. You can’t become a poet overnight. It’s not like you see something and just click on it. Poetry is always an evolving medium. You go through so much suffering so that one new line, thought or couplet can come out. Poets have always changed the world. It’s not the war heroes, but the poets who give you hope. In days of war, it’s that hope that you live till the next day for,” says Puri.

He added that the unsaid in poetry is so prominent that it’d invariably seep into his filmmaking process as well. “Half of the time, I’d wonder on set why Vijay didn’t do that, and then he’d say, ‘But you didn’t tell me.’ So, poetry keeps reflecting in all my work, and I love it,” confesses Puri, who has also honed his visual lyricism by assisting and writing dialogues and songs for films of Sanjay Leela Bhansali, including Saawariya (2007) and Guzaarish (2010).

“There are so many things I’ve learnt from him when it comes to craft, from the detailing, pauses, silence, colours to even when the music should start. That’s all there, of course. But one thing I’ve imbibed in my heart that he’d keep telling me: Once a shot is done, it’ll be imprinted in time forever. I won’t be able to go back and change it. If you have to change something, now is the moment,” says Puri, adding, “Which is why I also kept telling Vijay. I’d tell him, ‘If you say that line like this, I’d sleep better at night.’ Bhansali has told me to do whatever I do with all my heart and conviction, and not do anything half-hearted at all.”

Vijay Varma made the most of the romance in this one, since he goes back to the more familiar territory of Nagraj Manjule’s Prime Video India show Matka King and an unnamed Hansal Mehta show that he’s just wrapped up the filming of. While he recalls he did a bit of romance in Sujoy Ghosh’s 2023 Netflix India crime thriller Jaane Jaan, he got the opportunity to explore another shade in Gustaakh Ishq. “The romance isn’t like the Shah Rukh Khan-Kajol one. It’s a more unsaid, kuchh pehle jaisa (old school) romance. So, it wasn’t a big ask. It was a nuanced, non-pronounced romance which I particularly enjoy doing,” says Varma.

Also Read — Gustakh Ishq movie review: Vijay Varma, Naseeruddin Shah are up against forced melodrama, flat storytelling

His co-star Fatima, however, has been a part of two blooming romances this year — Anurag Basu’s musical Metro… In Dino and Vivek Soni’s Aap Jaisa Koi on Netflix India. But instead of leaning on Fatima for initiating him into the world of romantic films, Varma got a head start and turned out to be the reassuring one instead.  “I started the shoot earlier than her. I spent six-seven days and got acclimatized to the director, the text, the character as well as the weather. So, I was a bit warmed up by the time she came. She was the nervous one when she entered. So, it was the other way round. I comforted her and held her hand through it,” says Varma.