Mai Vaapas Aaunga: The Unfinished Search for Home

By Qurat ul Ain Arshad

Some films entertain us, some remind us of people we have lost, and a few open doors to worlds we had never imagined. Imtiaz Ali’s Mai Vaapas Aaunga did all three for me.

This was a film I had waited to watch, one that connected me to someone long gone and opened a new door of imagination, allowing me to relate to people beyond the boundaries of religion, geography, and politics. What moved me most was its understanding that love is not always about possessing another person. Sometimes, it is about finding a place where one finally belongs.

Beyond its visual beauty, the film was equally pleasing to the ear. The sounds of running, bicycles, and, most memorably, the persistent call of the red-wattled lapwing (commonly known as tatiri) created an atmosphere deeply rooted in Punjab’s landscape. Its familiar, distinctive cry seemed to carry the sound of the land itself, evoking the fields, open spaces, and rural memories that belong to both sides of a divided Punjab. As this sound recurs across the past and present, it becomes more than an element of the film’s soundscape; it becomes a thread connecting two timelines, much like Kinnu himself, whose memories refuse to remain confined to the past. The land may have been divided by borders, but its sounds, like its memories, continue to travel freely.

The Imtiaz Ali factor lies in his treatment of Kinnu’s love for Jiya. It is not merely the individual love of two people; it is the love of belonging. Despite having a stable life, Kinnu remains emotionally homeless, unable to feel entirely at home anywhere. This is the loss that many people experienced after Partition: the loss of a place, certainly, but also of familiarity, identity, and the uncomplicated certainty of belonging somewhere.

Kinnu’s dementia makes this tragedy even more poignant, bringing to mind Saadat Hasan Manto’s Toba Tek Singh. Like Bishan Singh, Kinnu inhabits a world in which geographical borders have divided what memory continues to hold together. Bishan Singh refuses to choose between India and Pakistan, remaining on the strip of land between them. To those around him, he is a madman; yet his refusal exposes the absurdity of a political division that demands people identify where they belong. In his final act, he appears saner than those who unquestioningly accept the choices imposed upon them.

Kinnu’s fate, however, differs from Bishan Singh’s in a crucial way. Manto’s protagonist resists the imposed binary through an act of defiance, whereas Imtiaz Ali explores the possibility that fate itself can leave a person suspended between worlds. Manto gives his character a final, devastating choice; Ali makes us feel the weight of a life that cannot find its way home.

Manto’s “Upri gur gur di annexe di be-dhiyana di mung di daal” from Toba Tek Singh finds an intriguing echo in Kinnu’s seemingly absurd references to “Moon pe jalsa hai” and “Aurtain Mexico chali gayi” in Mai Wapas Aaunga. Though separated by decades and different narrative contexts, these expressions reveal how language can become a refuge when reality itself becomes difficult to comprehend. Bishan Singh’s fragmented utterances emerge from a world that insists on dividing his homeland into rigid national categories, while Kinnu’s strange, imaginative recollections carry the residue of a past that refuses to disappear. Their words may sound nonsensical to those around them, but beneath their apparent absurdity lies a profound emotional truth. Sometimes, what sounds like madness is an attempt to articulate a reality that the supposedly sane world has failed to understand. Through this unexpected literary connection, Imtiaz Ali’s film becomes more than a story of Partition; it becomes a conversation with Manto about memory, displacement, and the limits of language.

Ishar Singh’s (old Kinnu played by Naseer ud Din Shah) relationship with Nivi (Diljit Dosanjh) offers another beautiful dimension to this idea. Through him, Ishar finds a connection that transcends age. His attachment to his grandson allows him to recognize his friend Aftab in a younger generation, as older people often rediscover fragments of their younger selves in their grandchildren. Nivi’s desire to visit Sargodha becomes more than an inherited curiosity; it grows into a personal search for a history that might otherwise have remained distant. I understood that longing intimately. For Nivi, it was Sargodha; for me, it is Jalandhar.

When Kinnu finally reaches Sargodha, Pakistan, his journey becomes an inward return as much as a geographical one. He is no longer travelling only for his grandfather or for the sake of inherited memories. He is also searching for himself, for the part of his identity that has remained suspended across decades and borders.

Imtiaz Ali’s direction is phenomenal, but the moment that left me speechless was the significance of the opening scene itself. As the women of Kinnu’s life, his soulmate, sister, mother, and daughter, arrive to take him towards the heavens, the invitation to leave is finally there. Yet something still holds him back. The film’s opening at the Attari-Wagah border between Amritsar and Lahore is a masterstroke of storytelling, revealing its deeper significance only as the narrative unfolds.

Sharvari’s portrayal of Afsana makes her feel less like an ordinary character and more like someone drawn from the pages of a half-remembered story, as warm and fleeting as a patch of sunlight or as comforting as the shade of a tree. The decision to retain the same face across the years feels deliberate, as though time has altered everything around her but not the place she occupies in Kinnu’s memory. And Ishar waiting for her approval before finally leaving this world is a tenderness difficult to put into words. Even at the threshold of death, he seems to need her permission to let go, suggesting that after a lifetime of searching, home was never merely a place on a map; it was always her.

The film’s closing credits, with their imagery of refugees, reinforce this loss with remarkable force. Homelessness is not merely the loss of a place to live; it is the loss of the people, memories, and familiar surroundings that make a place feel like home. A border can redraw a map, but it cannot erase the home that continues to exist within someone.

Perhaps this is why Mai Vaapas Aaunga resonates so deeply across South Asia. Every family seems to carry a Partition story, whether preserved through first hand memories or inherited silences. The film leaves us thinking about our parents and grandparents, and about the homes that history made unreachable.

Some films end when the credits begin. This one stays with you long afterwards, reminding you that returning home is not always about crossing a border. Sometimes, it is about finding the self that was left behind.

Qurat ul Ain Arshad is an MPhil scholar with a keen interest in literature, cinema, and pop culture. Her writing explores the intersections of storytelling, cultural memory, and the human experience.