Interview with Gurnam Bhullar - Ishqan De Lekhe - Balkirat Aulakh - Radio Haanji

Gurnam Bhullar on Ishqan De Lekhe - What He Told Balkirat Aulakh on Radio Haanji About the Film He Put His Heart Into

Gurnam Bhullar did not just act in Ishqan De Lekhe. He produced it.

That is the detail that most audiences miss when they watch the film — and it is the detail that makes this Radio Haanji conversation between Gurnam and host Balkirat Aulakh worth your time. When a producer sits in the chair across from an interviewer and talks about his own film, the conversation goes to places a standard press tour rarely reaches. He is not there to sell tickets. He already has the box office numbers. He is there because the film meant something to him, and he wants to talk about what.

This episode, streaming now at haanji.com.au/podcast, is one of those interviews that starts somewhere and ends up somewhere else entirely.

The man behind the film, not just in front of the camera

Gurnam Bhullar has been in Punjabi cinema long enough that his name on a poster carries weight. Qismat. Lekh. Rose Rosy Te Gulab. Every few years he chooses a project that pushes him somewhere new. Ishqan De Lekhe is different from those earlier films in one specific way: this time he built it from the ground up.

Producing a film while playing its male lead is a different kind of pressure. You are responsible for everything — the casting, the budget, the music direction — and then you walk on set and have to let all of that go and just be present in a scene. Gurnam spoke to Balkirat Aulakh about that double weight, and what comes through is not stress or self-congratulation. It is clarity. He knew what kind of film he wanted to make, and making it himself was the only way to make sure it came out that way.

That directness of intention shows in the finished product. Ishqan De Lekhe does not feel like a film made by committee. It has a point of view — about love, about trust, about what illness does to a relationship when neither person is ready for it. That coherence starts with the person who decided what the film was going to be before a single frame was shot.

Why Isha Malviya, and what he saw that others might have missed

Casting the female lead in a romantic drama is a decision that shapes everything. The wrong choice and no amount of strong writing or beautiful cinematography saves the film. Gurnam's conversation with Balkirat turned to this — the decision to cast Isha Malviya in her debut Punjabi feature, someone the audience knew from television and Bigg Boss but had never seen carry a full film.

What he describes is not a gamble. It is a reading of a person. Isha has something that you can see in very few actors, new or established — the ability to hold stillness on screen without going flat. Jasneet, the character she plays, is guarded, emotionally complex, and for much of the film operating under a painful misunderstanding. That is a hard thing to play. Overact it and you lose the audience's sympathy. Underplay it and the story stops moving. She does neither.

From a producer's perspective, Gurnam took on real risk with that decision. The film's emotional architecture depends on Jasneet being someone you believe in completely. That risk paid off — Isha's performance is the conversation people keep coming back to when they discuss the film.

The social message — and why he insisted it stay

One of the more striking things about Ishqan De Lekhe is that it carries a health awareness message woven into the love story, and it never once feels like an insert. You do not sit in the theatre and sense the gears shifting from romance to social responsibility. The two things move together, because they come from the same place in the story.

Gurnam spoke about this choice directly with Balkirat. The decision was deliberate. He wanted to make a film that did something beyond entertain — that left the audience with a thought that mattered. But the condition was that the message had to earn its place. If it disrupted the emotional journey of the story, it had to go. The fact that it stays in, and works, tells you something about how carefully the screenplay was constructed.

Punjabi cinema has been making this kind of film more and more in recent years — romance that carries weight beyond the romance. Ishqan De Lekhe belongs to that tradition. It takes it seriously.

What the diaspora response has meant

When a Punjabi film does well globally — in Australia, in Canada, in the UK, in the US — it means something specific to the people who made it. The diaspora audience has a particular relationship with Pollywood. These are communities where Punjabi is a language spoken at home, at the gurdwara, at weddings, and then often nowhere else. A Punjabi film that travels is not just commercial success. It is validation of a language and a culture that many in the diaspora spend their lives holding onto in a world that pushes constantly toward assimilation.

Gurnam's awareness of this came through clearly in the conversation. The response from Indian and Punjabi communities in Australia — people who have seen the film in cinemas here and are still talking about it — is the kind of feedback that means something different from a good review. It is the film reaching the people it was made for.

For Radio Haanji 1674 AM, this conversation matters for that exact reason. This station exists for Melbourne's Punjabi and Indian community. When Gurnam Bhullar sits down to speak on haanji.com.au/podcast, he is not doing a generic press circuit stop. He is talking to an audience that already has an intimate relationship with his work — people who follow Punjabi cinema not as a hobby but as a connection to home.

You can read the full breakdown of the film — cast, story, music, and more — in Radio Haanji's Ishqan De Lekhe review and cast guide. The conversation with Balkirat is the companion piece — what happens when the man who made the film explains why.

Listen to the Balkirat Aulakh and Gurnam Bhullar interview now on Radio Haanji

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If Ishqan De Lekhe stayed with you after the credits, this conversation will tell you why it was always going to.

 

Radio Haanji 1674 AM | Punjabi Podcast | Broadcasting from Melbourne, Australia Listen free at haanji.com.au | Available on Spotify & Apple Podcasts Serving the Punjabi community across Melbourne · Sydney · Brisbane · Australia · Worldwide