Imtiaz Ali’s fans find his films to be philosophical and deeply spiritual, and in a recent interview, the filmmaker opened up about reading religious texts as a child, and how they deeply influenced him. He shared that he read the Rig Veda as a child, and was first introduced to the Bhagvad Gita when he was around 10 years old. The Jab We Met director said that his introduction to Bhagvad Gita happened because that was the only book he could afford to buy from a railway station book store, but it impacted him deeply.
He recalled the incident, and shared that he was only 10-years-old when he was travelling via train all alone. Since Imtiaz had a few bucks on him and he wanted to buy some reading material for his journey, he entered a book store at the station. “The only book that was available cheaply then, this is so ironic, that was Bhagvad Gita. It was a thick, small book. So, I thought I will buy this, it was the only thing I could afford,” he shared with Ranveer Allahbadia.
“I knew that when people see me reading this book, they will think that it is a weird choice. Of course, I had heard about Bhagvad Gita. I thought this is good, this will give a good impression also. But after all of this, when I actually started reading it, it was so easy to understand. There was hardly anything in it that I did not understand, but there were a lot of things that I read 5-10 times,” he said.
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Imtiaz said that after this, he would read a few pages of Bhagvad Gita every day. “Bhagvad Gita has been an important thing in my life. It has been the small book that has always been kept on my side table,” he shared and added, “It was miraculous that I was lucky to get exposed to it.”
Imtiaz said that not just this, he reads other religious texts as well and is “deeply entertained” by them. “They offer quite interesting things,” he said, adding that he’d read the Rig Veda daily for a long period in his life.
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