Vedang Raina's family comes from a locality called Raina Wari in Srinagar. He said as much on a panel at the International Film Festival of Jammu & Kashmir this week, and he said it the way people talk about home when they haven't been back in a while.

The festival, now in its second edition, put Raina on stage with Imtiaz Ali and Sharvari, his director and co-star from Main Vaapas Aaunga, the partition-era drama that's been the biggest talking point of Raina's year since The Archies put him on the map in 2023. But the conversation drifted from the film to the actor's own history fairly quickly.

"This is only my second visit to Kashmir," Raina told the gathering. "But whenever I come here, last time I came with my family, I am very happy. It feels like this is my home." He went on to draw the line between his own generation's distance from the region and the distance the characters in Main Vaapas Aaunga carry from Partition itself. "Our generation has never seen a partition. Neither has my generation seen Kashmir as much as I wanted to see. So I am very happy every time I come here."

Then came the line that gave the panel its headline moment. "I am getting the same feeling as Main Vaapas Aaunga. It truly feels like Main Vaapas Aa Gaya Hu," he said, folding the film's own title into his sentence about actually returning to the Valley. "Kashmir will always be home. Srinagar will always be home. I am from Raina Wari. My family is from Raina Wari. And when I come to Srinagar, I am very happy. I can't express it in words."

It's a small detail, a surname tied to a specific neighbourhood, but it explains something about why Raina keeps circling back to Kashmir in interviews rather than treating it as one more festival stop. His generation grew up mostly outside the Valley. This was, by his own count, only his second time back.

IFFJK is still finding its footing as a festival, only two editions in, built around the idea of pulling national attention toward Kashmir's own film culture rather than treating the region purely as a backdrop for other people's stories. Getting a working Bollywood cast to sit on a panel and talk about roots rather than box office numbers is exactly the kind of moment the organisers would have wanted.

For Raina, Main Vaapas Aaunga already marked a shift away from being known just for The Archies. What he said in Srinagar suggests the film did something else too, it gave him a reason to keep going back to a place his family left behind and he's only recently started reconnecting with.