“Why always the same story?” The question trailed Imtiaz Ali like a shadow as he began working on his sixth film. His fifth with his creative backbone, editor Aarti Bajaj; his third with AR Rahman, whose music always gave his ideas its bloodstream; and his second with Ranbir Kapoor, the muse who mirrored his emotional voltage better than anyone else. The film was Tamasha, which inevitably, became the very thing he was accused of repeating. A man divided between instinct and intellect; a boyish soul who finds himself only by losing himself first, a character who discovers his voice at the precise point where love fractures and then, unexpectedly, reconstitutes. It was as simple as it was imperfect, as rich as it was messy. It was as Ali as a film could be: never neat, always contradictory, perpetually searching. A film that, by retelling the familiar arc for the umpteenth time, turned the criticism back on the world and asked, in complete defiance: “Why must the same story always feel like a crime?” Because, after …