In a scene during Imtiaz Ali’s Main Vaapas Aaunga, when Nirvair (Diljit Dosanjh) takes the stage at an open mic in London, I braced myself. In my head, Ali is notorious for dipping his toes in subcultures he considers ‘hip and trendy’ (like stand-up comedy here, fresco painting in 2009’s Love Aaj Kal) – including them as passing details in a film, never to be brought up again. Over here, it’s used to establish Nirvair as a young wastrel (from a wealthy family in Amritsar) coasting through life. He can’t stick to a job for more than two months, he can’t commit to his girlfriend, Kaveri (Banita Sandhu). His father (Rajat Kapoor) asks, “Why do you keep running?” – a narrative failsafe, lest the metaphor be lost on someone unfamiliar with an escapist Imtiaz Ali protagonist. Nirvair’s life is meant to be contrasted with a 17-year-old Kinnu (a doe-eyed Vedang Raina), another sheltered brat living in Sargodha (in modern-day Pakistan) in the months leading up to August 1947; falling in love, as the world around him turns more vicious than his naive self can fathom. This trope, where a today’s philanderer somberly listens to a love story from an earlier generation, is something Ali has often relied on in his earlier films too.I fixate on Dosanjh’s stand-up scenes here, because few things in Main Vaapas Aaunga say more about Ali’s limitations as a filmmaker. Especially the way he talks down to a crowd on the horrors of partition, as he educates himself while playing caretaker of his ailing grandfather. Or when he says that women in that era had to endure ‘double torture’; a somewhat blunt way refer to the widespread sexual violence that took place. For a film that exists between paradise-like dreams and harrowing real-life trauma, there’s something scattershot about Ali’s film – sometimes strikingly felt – but like nearly all of Nirvair’s stand-up routine, full of obvious sermonising.Kinnu is now Ishar Singh Grewal (Naseeruddin Shah), and he might be Imtiaz Ali’s take on Saadat Hasan Manto’s Toba Tek Singh. At a ripe age of 95, aching in the present, haunted by his past, and lured by a what-could-have-been reality – Ishar is also in no man’s land. Mumbling incoherently, it becomes clear that after a life spent suppressing his trauma and desires, they’re bubbling up, refusing to let him live in peace, and even preventing him from dying. Shah, one of the greatest actors to have graced our screens, acts the hell out of what might be his meatiest part in a feature film in the last decade. Especially how he enacts the dementia episodes, when Ishar recognises someone momentarily, and when the light leaves his eyes. In his ramblings to his grandson Nirvair, Ishar remembers stray names of people and places from his teenage years; causing Nirvair to reconstruct his grandpa’s partition memories. As it eventually occurs to Nirvair, closure might lie on the other side of the border, in Sargodha (once again after Ikkis). A still from ‘Main Vaapas Aaunga.’Co-written by Ali and Nayanika Mahtani, Main Vaapas Aaunga is sincere in its core thesis, and yet the screenplay spreads itself far too thin, stopping to pontificate on issues. There are scenes when Nirvair is told to permanently move out of India, to showcase his patriotism. “Who is more patriotic than the NRI today?” his friends chuckle. Nirvair does a caricature of Radcliffe during a stand-up routine, which looks worse coming a few months after an episode was dedicated to humanising the British lawyer in Freedom at Midnight S02, as someone largely aware of the despicable task he’d been asked to carry out. The more Nirvair learns about Ishar’s past life, we get scenes where he’s verbalising lessons to Kaveri on a video call – which becomes clunky after a point. Ali has always been a problematic writer of the modern-day man/woman dynamic, and the way he views women has seen little growth despite making films for over two decades.Which brings me to Afsana (nicknamed Jiya), played by Sharvari Wagh, a manic-pixie dream girl, who studied in the same college as Kinnu. I haven’t seen much of Wagh’s work to have a definitive opinion on her acting prowess, but she’s just about adequate as an Imtiaz Ali leading lady: equal parts exuberant, pretty, loyal and passive. As much as I understand that these women are drawn from memories of the men reminiscing about them, I suppose Ali could’ve lent more specificity to Jiya. Relatively, I thought Vedang Raina gave a better performance, as the teenager full of nerves. I was touched by the sincerity and the anguish of Raina’s Kinnu. Aided by his regular editor Aarti Bajaj, Ali and his crew concoct a film playing in Ishar’s mind. However, that sometimes becomes an excuse for the film’s own muddled telling. Also, I found myself slightly annoyed with how Bajaj and Ali tease the fate of the women in Ishar’s family, who were left behind in a Muslim neighbour’s home at the time of the partition. We eventually find out what happened to them in a grim scene, featuring a powerful Dolly Ahluwalia. However, I couldn’t make my mind up if Ali used the traumatic memory for anything beyond its shock value. A still from ‘Main Vaapas Aaunga.’There are things to cherish in Main Vaapas Aaunga: Kinnu telling his sister Phoola about how Jiya said ‘yes’ to him. The promise of young love, prevailing over one of the most grisly events of displacement to take place around the world. Naseeruddin Shah stupefied by the flashes of a young Jiya, complaining about losing her silver earring on her way to college. An elder tussling with his memories of the partition, saying he’d prefer its dastardliness to be buried with him. AR Rahman meshing a folksy tappa song with a ‘60s twist to echo Kinnu and Jiya’s cosmopolitan surroundings. However, one also gets the feeling that as much as Ali is able to stoke the tears by depicting the fallout of partition, he’s not able to prod beyond the obvious. Both the trauma and tears in the end feel generic.Ali ends the film with Dosanjh appearing in a music video for Rahman’s Kya Kamaal Hai, which plays during the end credits. The video splices footage from Gaza, South Sudan, Indian partition archives, scenes from the film with Dosanjh sitting in a “refugee home” being attacked. It’s a strong thesis, Rahman’s orchestration is beautiful, and yet it’s hard to see it as anything beyond Ali grandstanding. In a time when Hindi films have been conditioned to leave their politics at home, this might mean a lot more. I’m sure Ali’s concerns about the world we’re inhabiting are sincere, but a more assured filmmaker would convey the message in an understated manner. At a runtime of an extensive 146 minutes, Ali knows how to make us mourn the wounds of partition. Alas, he might not know how to look beyond the scar. *Main Vaapas Aaunga is playing in theatres.