Main Vaapas Aaunga Cast/Actors: Diljit Dosanjh, Naseeruddin Shah, Sharvari, Vedang Raina, Banita Sandhu, Danish Pondar, Rajat Kapoor, Sanjay Suri, Manish Chaudhari & Mashhoor Amrohi
Main Vaapas Aaunga Director: Imtiaz Ali
Main Vaapas Aaunga Production House: Applause Entertainment & Window Seat Films
Main Vaapas Aaunga Release Date: 12th June, 2026
Main Vaapas Aaunga Released/Available In Languages: Hindi
Main Vaapas Aaunga Available On: Theatrical Release (likely to be released on Netflix OTT Platform)
Main Vaapas Aaunga Runtime: 2h 46m
Main Vaapas Aaunga Movie Review:
In Chandigarh, 95-year-old Ishar Singh Grewal alias Kinnu (Naseeruddin Shah) is battling a stroke and dementia; Dadaji is on his deathbed.
Amidst his rambling delirium over Martians and Sargodha while making cussed comments at family members taking care of him, the searing pain of 1947 finally stands out.
UK-based grandson Nirvair (Diljit Dosanjh), between IT jobs and a failure at standup comedy, leaves behind a relationship (with girlfriend Banita Sandhu) that’s defying definition, and heads to Chandigarh.
Between Nirvair’s dogged attempt to decipher grandpa’s delirious but determined hold on a trauma that needs closure, the pangs of separation, the pain of Partition, the horrifying truths families seek to keep buried, emerge with ferocity.
To Imtiaz Ali’s credit, every sequence has an emotional high, or depth if you wish. The frequent swings to an undivided India are accompanied by camerawork that makes it out to be an idyllic world of poetry, amity and green fields. There’s clarity that young Kinnu (Vedang Raina) and Afsana alias Jia (Sharvari) are a couple, she full of girly nakhras and chand balis, he full of promise that he’ll never desert her. He will return for her. But it takes an inordinately long while for even this much clarity to come through as the many flashes to pre-Partition Punjab have to be pieced together for some modicum of comprehension.
The overuse of tripping over the past makes the writing by Imtiaz Ali and Nayanika Mahtani indulgently disjointed. Half the time who’s who is as confusing as Dadaji’s delirium. Somewhere in the past is Manish Chaudhari (holding up communal brotherhood), there’s Sanjay Suri (unrecognisable) from the Grewal family, Mashhoor Amrohi (Jia’s family) and a sprinkling of others running in and out of the frame, barely establishing a grounded, rounded story.
Between Dadaji’s cries of ‘Jia, Jia’, and Nirvair dashing around to make sense of the painful past of the Grewal family, there emerges the heart connect with the traumas of 1947. A trauma that lingers in families to this day.
When a filmmaker embarks on love and pain, he steers clear of communal politics. Imtiaz too roots for peace, endorsing the thought that those who left home did not have a choice. But separation, the bloodshed, rape and carnage (pregnant wombs torn open) that came with it, will keep getting exhumed by memories.
Imtiaz has a flair for poetic storytelling. Naseeruddin Shah and Diljit Dosanjh have a bond that finally has the grandson finding Jia on the other side of the border to bring closure to Kinnu. The young Kinnu who had tattooed Mallka dil fareb on his forearm as proof of his undying love for Jia.
The final moments where Nirvair desperately seeks Jia as Dadaji watches over the phone are poignant as are the end credits which roll with the miseries of refugees world over, Diljit’s voice and presence owning the screen. Ultimately, it’s the poignancy of the loss of humanity that prevails, not just one love story.
If only Imtiaz Ali didn’t take such a long-winded, disjointed and often incomprehensible route to touch that poignant note.
PS: The premise and title do seem much ado as Kinnu did go back for Jia only to return disheartened that she was married to someone else. So how is his Main Wapas Aaunga promise termed ‘unfulfilled’?
Main Vaapas Aaunga – Watch Or Not?: Honestly, the few who have grandparents with painful stories to tell, the fewer who have never seen the carnage of 1947, and the handful who have the patience, may sit through this tale of love and separation.
Main Vaapas Aaunga Movie Review Score Rating: 2.5 out of 5 (i.e. 2.5/5)
Main Vaapas Aaunga Official Trailer:
Credits: Applause Entertainment
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, when filmmaker Imtiaz Ali teams again with Diljit Dosanjh, does he tell another story set in Punjab that holds you spellbound? Lehren watches and reports){kind=link}