The Life & Times of Irrfan Khan
Almost all of us have a favorite Irrfan Khan movie and moment — a particular scene, a particular dialogue, or its delivery that is going to be stuck with us for the rest of our lives.
There are two types of actors and the movies that they do. Some movies and actors are such that you watch their performance only once and then you have those movies and performances that you keep watching again and again. What’s astonishing is that even when you have watched the second type of movie, you watch them again and there are new facts and perspectives that are waiting to be discovered. Irrfan Khan has always belonged to the second type. The kind of roles and the movies that he has done makes us think whether we will ever be able to replace an actor of his pedigree.
When Maqbool begins, there is a scene where all the stalwarts of the Indian film industry and graduates from NSD are sitting. Naseeruddin Shah, Om Puri, Pankaj Kapur, and Piyush Mishra sit in Abbaji’s living room. Irrfan Khan is also sitting in the same room, junior most of all but with a distinct swagger and the confidence of a veteran. His time had finally come after a lot of struggle where he even started thinking of leaving Mumbai for good.
While he was struggling to get a foothold in Bollywood, he did a lot of TV shows such as Chandrakanta, Bharat Ek Khoj, Sparsh and Banegi Apni Baat where he directed fellow struggler Nawazuddin Siddiqui for an episode. His acting was always nuanced with a philosophical vibe always emanating from it. Although he also did movies such as Thank You, Rog, Knock Out, The Killer, and Right Yaa Wrong in between giving us masterpieces such as Haasil, Maqbool, Paan Singh Tomar, The Lunchbox, Life of Pi, The Namesake, Haider, Inferno, and Jurassic World. He majorly played a secondary role in these movies but outshined most of the lead actors.
I am not a film critic and I try to write about things that I like and when I would find something lacking, I am prone to be on the side of the actors. I can’t simply talk about Irrfan Khan’s acting in his movies and his quality because it would only turn out to be a long list of superlatives. Suffice it to say that whenever I read the name Roohdar, the image, the voice, and the walk that he did in Haider comes to mind. Whenever I meet a student leader, my mind rushes back to compare him with Ranvijay Singh from Haasil. For Irrfan, getting into the skin of the character was the most interesting thing and the movies that he did were his means to achieve greatness and create a very personal bond with the audience.
A few of us will know that he rejected Ridley Scott’s The Martian to act in Shoojit Sircar’s Piku and he did full justice to his role of a taxi business owner. Once he was having brunch at a New York City restaurant and he saw Mark Ruffalo sitting across. Irrfan Khan elbowed Aditya Bhattacharya and asked him, “Hello toh bolte hain” but end up not walking up to him. However, the strangest thing happened and as Aditya recounts ‘Mark saw him, put his hand forward and said, ‘Hey man, I love your work’. And Irrfan probably saw sparkling lights all over’.
Even when he was being treated in London, he managed to complete Angrezi Medium which released just before the country went into lockdown. Irrfan Khan has left us, while he still had so many roles to play. One silver lining in all this is the large treasure trove of films that he has left behind for his fans to enjoy.
Marlon Brando once asked Johnny Depp how many films he does in a year. Three, said Depp. “Too much,” said Brando. “We only have so many faces in our pockets.”
