Ranbir Kapoor, Saif Ali Khan to Vedang Raina: Many faces of Imtiaz Ali’s heroes

There is a particular kind of hero who walks through an Imtiaz Ali film. He isn’t about his swagger. Often, he is confused. Sometimes he is selfish. But he feels intensely, inconveniently and beautifully. Love, for him, is an experience that rearranges his entire life.

Across two decades of storytelling, Ali has built a gallery of such men. They are romantic without being conventional. They search for meaning through relationships, journeys and memory. With ‘Main Wapas Aaunga’, a new entrant joins this group of men - Vedang Raina. To understand what this means, it helps to look back at the lover boys who came before him.

Shahid Kapoor: The romantic who learns to live (‘Jab We Met’)

In ‘Jab We Met’, Shahid Kapoor’s Aditya Kashyap begins as a man who has already given up. He is wealthy, educated and emotionally exhausted. Love does not energise him because he is wounded. What makes this character memorable is his gradual rediscovery of desire. Through Geet’s (Kareena Kapoor) chaos and warmth, he learns that romance begins with finding one's own self. He must first find the will to live before he can find the courage to love. This is a template: the Imtiaz Ali man is often broken before he becomes whole.

Saif Ali Khan: Love across time (‘Love Aaj Kal’)

Saif Ali Khan’s Jai is modern and practical and someone who believes relationships must fit into life’s schedule. Yet the film reveals the fragility of this logic. Love refuses to obey timelines. It lingers, returns and complicates. Running parallel to Jai’s story is an older love tale, suggesting that love is timeless.

Ranbir Kapoor: The artist who can’t escape himself (‘Rockstar’, ‘Tamasha’)

Few actors have embodied Ali’s emotional universe as fully as Ranbir Kapoor. In ‘Rockstar’, Jordan’s hunger for love and recognition turns destructive. In ‘Tamasha’, Ved struggles with a different crisis, the suffocation of routine and eventually finds a release by finding the artist in him. He must accept his own fragmented self before he can commit to another person. These characters expanded the Imtiaz Ali hero from romantic wanderer to existential seeker. Love took a philosophical turn here.

Avinash Tiwary: Devotion as destiny (‘Laila Majnu’)

With ‘Laila Majnu’, which the director wrote, he returned to a more classical idea of romance. Avinash Tiwary’s Qais does not evolve in love. Instead, he dissolves into love completely. This is yearning in its rawest form possible… It is obsessive, spiritual and tragic.

Diljit Dosanjh: Love, fame and loneliness (‘Amar Singh Chamkila’)

In ‘Amar Singh Chamkila’, Diljit Dosanjh plays the titular character and portrays a man adored by crowds yet haunted by his own demons. Romance exists, but that’s not the defining part of this artist; it was his hunger to perform. This iteration of the Imtiaz Ali hero is rooted in reality. He is shaped by class mobility, artistic hunger and public scrutiny. Love becomes both refuge and risk. Like every Imtiaz Ali, he loves dangerously and his story meets the inevitable tragic ending.

Vedang Raina: The promise that refuses to fade (‘Main Wapas Aaunga’)

Now comes Vedang Raina, stepping into this lineage with the role of a young Punjabi man separated from his beloved by the violence of Partition. His character in the upcoming film ‘Main Wapas Aaunga’ evokes memories of a bygone era and his promise to return is the story we are hoping to chase. What makes this casting intriguing is the actor’s unpredictability. A Gen-Z boy playing a man from the 40s is an enchanting choice. Unlike his predecessors, Vedang arrives like a fresh slate here. This allows the performance to feel unburdened, almost fragile. He also carries the responsibility of portraying a character whose later life is shaped by decades of absence. In doing so, he must build on the art of longing.

Across his films, the Imtiaz Ali hero has remained a restless traveller of the heart, searching, stumbling and loving with a sincerity that often costs him everything.