Love, lights, & Saiyaara: Heartbreak, hope, and a story straight from the soul — Mohit Suri opens up on the film

An eternal romantic, noted director Mohit Suri has often made hearts ache with his stories of heartbreaking love. But as the Aashiqui 2 director readies his latest, Saiyaara, he admits he’s more nervous than excited. Of all the love ballads he has created, this one is closest to his heart — “my voice,” he calls it, more personal than anything he’s ever done.

The story, penned three years ago, took Suri back to his younger self — to those heady days “when you are head over heels in love for the first time and also trying to make your mark in your career.”

Years after his first brush with love to today, when he’s happily married to actor Udita Goswami, he still considers himself a hopeless romantic — “even though my wife often calls me a fraud,” he laughs. Days before Saiyaara, his ode to love, hits the screens, the man behind superhits such as Ek Villain and Kalyug talks about taking chances — especially with new talent.

Yes, the male lead Ahaan Panday is Chunky Panday’s nephew; however, Suri insists that had nothing to do with his casting. “I’ve never worked with Chunky ji, don’t know him personally. May have crossed paths once and bowed out of respect, but that’s all.”

In Ahaan, he wasn’t looking for traces of Emraan Hashmi, Aditya Roy Kapur or Sidharth Malhotra. “It’s unfair to compare Ahaan with any of them. If I wanted their reflection, I’d cast them. Ahaan has his own style and talent must be seen without comparisons.”

As for his leading lady, Aneet Padda, he believes the Amritsar-born is just the right fit for the role of a ‘Punjaban’ girl. But what truly set her apart was her natural presence — “a breath of fresh air, sans any cosmetic intervention.”

While he has no judgement against girls who undergo cosmetic surgery, Suri wonders aloud, “Where do you see a girl over 18 not resorting to cosmetic surgery today?” To each their own, he quickly adds. But Aneet was perfect for the character — “a girl who is analogue, very simple, writes in a diary and isn’t obsessed with social media.” He beams, “Aneet will go a long way.”

Discovering and promoting new talent has always been Suri’s strongest suit. If earlier he introduced us to a soulful Arijit Singh, now Saiyaara marks the debut of two Kashmiri singers — Faheem Abdullah and Arslan Nizami.

Working with fresh voices, he says, “keeps you relevant and contemporary.” But he doesn’t believe in reinventing love stories just to make them ‘modern’. “Heartbreak still feels the same,” he shrugs. “I cried when I watched Titanic, a film set in the 1900s, when I was still in school.”

And it’s this emotional reaction — not intellectual analysis — that he trusts most. “Often, we overstate the importance of watching a film with the head. The body reacts better.”

While Vishesh Films — where Suri began — was known for thrillers, he found his true calling in love stories. After the success of Murder 2, he pleaded with his uncle Mahesh Bhatt to let him make Aashiqui 2. The rest, as they say, is history. Or as he puts it: “Your genre finds you.”

Today, Saiyaara is being produced by none other than Yash Raj Films. When two romantics such as Mohit Suri and Aditya Chopra collaborate, the result is pure emotion. Meeting Chopra, he says, was a fan-boy moment. “When I watched Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge, everyone was gaga over the actors. I wanted to know who the director was.” Now, he’s grateful to Chopra for believing in his vision. As Saiyaara readies for a July 18 release, Suri has no pre-release pitch or marketing hook. “I’ve made a film I’d want to watch as an audience — a pure love story.”

For Suri, true love is that rare feeling when you simply can’t imagine living without someone. That emotion, he insists, doesn’t change — whether it’s a letter, a text or an Instagram post. And quoting Honore de Balzac, he signs off: “True love is eternal, infinite, and always like itself.”