By CHANDNA ARORA

When Imran Khan narrates the story of how he met Abbas Tyrewala, the director of his soon-to-be-released debut Jaane Tu... Ya Jaane Na, it turns out to be quite an interesting story.

Imran wanted to be in the movies, he says, but not to be an actor. “I think I always knew I wanted to be involved in films, because of the close connection that I have with it and how much I enjoy every aspect of it,” he says. “I never really wanted to act, though. The acting bit came very recently, only when I met Abbas. I went to film school in LA and trained to be a writer and director. That was my career plan. I even worked in LA for a while, so I was really setting down that career path, and quite seriously,” he says.

Meeting Abbas was “a series of coincidences”, he goes on. “I knew the lady who is now Abbas’ mother-in-law. At the time, Pakhi, the casting director for the film, wasn’t married to Abbas, but I used to take Hindi classes from her mom, Mrs Reena Mehta. And so, when she found out that Abbas was looking for a new boy for his film, she remembered and recommended me, and Abbas tracked me down and called me. I recognised Abbas’ name, because of his lyrics. That was about three years ago. Some production person called me and said that Mr Tyrewala wanted to meet me. And I didn’t know what the context was – I was looking to assist a director, and I thought that was probably what it was all about. I went to meet him, and over the course of that meeting, I realised that he actually wanted me to act in his film.

So I said, ‘Listen, I’m not an actor.’ But he really liked me a lot for the part, and I liked him too, because he and I have very similar sensibilities, and a very similar sense of humour. So I went along with it in that first meeting. He narrated the script to me and I really, really fell in love with it. I gave a screen test, and one thing led to another, and that’s how it happened.”

Now that he’s gotten into it, Imran plans to stick with acting for a while. He has completed his second film, called Kidnap, directed by Sanjay Gadhvi, and he says it is an action-suspense-thriller, completely different from Jaane Tu... Is he looking to direct anytime soon? “I feel I’m not mature enough to direct a film. I’ve directed several short films, but that takes less from you. I want to wait, get a little more experience, and get to a place where I think I’m ready to do it,” he says.

Meanwhile, Imran is still enjoying the aftertaste of having worked in a very young movie. “People make films about young people at the age when they’ve lost the pulse of the youth,” he says. “They’ve forgotten what youth is. Abbas said that he wanted to make this film while he still remembered what it was like. For most of the actors we have on board – except Genelia – this is their first film. And that’s the case in other departments too. The clichéd filmy way to decorate a youngster’s room would be to put a poster of Britney Spears in there. But aisa nahin hai. The guys would think, ‘What would I put in my room?’”

But to come back to where we started from, why was Imran taking Hindi classes at all? “I’ve actually studied for most of my life in the South. As a result, I never really spoke Hindi. So, by the time I had my exams, my Hindi was very weak, and I was taking spoken Hindi classes to improve my vocabulary,” he says. So ab toh Hindi jaane tu, Imran?