I am a huge Yash Chopra fan. I believe in romance and watching love stories. So, why not make one? But being a writer-director, I wasn’t writing one. This wonderful story by Arati Raval Pandey reached me.It is  a beautiful short film about two people a boy who is new to the city and a city girl, and their chemistry. The beauty of the story is that it takes place in a span of a day. So, I decided to direct it. That was my draw for it.Yes theres nervousness at the door of every film. The whole challenge of making Feels like Ishq was that one has to become a lot younger by mind and spirit because look at the spread of stories that have been pulled together by Netflix. These are fresh, young stories.What I like about Feels Like Ishq is the profiling of many towns, townscapes. religions and age groups that have been merged. The challenge for me was to deliver a very realistic but also a beautiful love story, while maintaining its charm and dignity. That’s why I was excited and nervous at the same time.I am so glad I got this character because you always have the baggage of a character that has been accepted widely. Then people tend to typecast you. This was something I wanted to do, something different from Moosa (his character in The Family Man). And Feels Like Ishq came my way.I must say the perspective of looking at your work as to what you should pick and what should be the kind of work you should do that has been affected in a positive way. When you are confined to a space, there’s a certain demography that you are targeting and there’s a set of things that work there so you tend to do the same thing but when you have a larger audience you can experiment.The possibilities are endless and when you suddenly appeal to pan-Indian audience, there’s so much exciting stuff coming your way. It’s refreshing. I don’t have to necessarily always do Malayalam movies. I can do a couple of Malayalam movies, a Hindi series, a Tamil film. In future maybe, you can also do a Hollywood movie.Look at us for example. I don’t know where I come from but I am working with Neeraj Madhav, who is from Kerala, a very popular actor, Zayn Khan comes from a very powerful family in Bombay (Zayn is Aamir Khan’s niece) but never mentions her background, goes to the theatre, works hard, gives auditions and creates winders with us on the set.So, take Feels Like Ishq as a parameter now, the series that we are building and walls are breaking down. I won’t feel an outsider anymore. Thank you for asking this. I don’t feel the hostility of Bollywood anymore because times are changing thanks to OTT platforms. I hope Neeraj agrees with me.Neeraj: Yes, because before for a South representation to happen in a Hindi project, it was all stereotyped and (had) very small screen space and irrelevant… Only a handful of good representations have happened.Not really because I don’t want my characters to extend to people’s personal lives. That’s not something I crave for. But maybe my musical side I want that admiration but not as an actor. Also, let me correct you. I did not grow up watching these idolised movies because we didn’t have that… Unlike in Hindi cinema, romance is not idolised that much in Malayalam cinema. So, just putting romance in a film with whatever actors never worked here. We had stories.Of course we had commercial movies, love stories and stars but we had stories to tell. So storytelling always inspired me. I never wanted to be that actor, who played a romantic character and girls would die for me. That was never in my head and neither will it ever be. I never got a taste for it.