There is a scene in the movie, Life of Pi, towards the end, where the camera zooms in on Irrfan Khan. He is looking slightly to your right, eyes welled with tears, as if he is about to cry, a clean shaven face, locks of glorious but unkempt hair falling over his forehead, his fingers absentmindedly touching his lips, shirt casually unbuttoned at the top and he says “ I suppose in the end, the whole of life becomes an act of letting go; but what always hurts the most is not taking a moment to say goodbye.” When he says the word “goodbye”, his eyes drift back and looks at you.
Art mimicking life!
Mr. Khan, you have spoken for all of us.
In advance.
Screengrab from YouTube
This is EXACTLY what we felt on the 29th of April, five years ago. You were (it still feels unreal to use the past tense when I have to write about you) a rare breed. An exception. A popular meme says “You can’t please everybody, you are not a Nutella.” They did not know about you.
Can one imagine any other actor playing the role of Ashoke Ganguli? How many fathers have inscribed “ Remember that you and I made this journey together to a place where there was nowhere left to go” inside books gifted to their children! Jhumpa Lahiri made sure that the quote was powerful enough in the written form, but you gave it life.
You were born to essay serious and intense roles. Be it the loyal gangster caught in an emotional conflict in Maqbool, or the haunting presence in troubled Kashmir in Haider, or as an investigating officer, unperturbed by media glare in Talvar.
But when it comes to the pinnacle of biographies, your tour de force, it has to be Paan Singh Tomar. You did not act. You lived that role.
While I will forever miss all of them, what I would certainly miss are the other genres, the comedies and the offbeat roles.
I fell in love with Saajan Fernandes. You just sat there, and read and wrote letters. Your letters were not to Ila Singh and the letters you received were not from her. It was us. I was in awe of Morgan freeman when it came to voice overs, a love story that started from The Shawshank Redemption, and I changed my loyalty when you came along.
No film journey is complete without a rags to riches story and you encapsulated that in a nutshell when you said “ I did not have money to buy a ticket to go watch the first Jurassic park, and here I am acting in one of its sequels”
I have kept the best for the last. Your comedy roles. I pick two that are my favorites.
Rana Chaudhary, “ no no, not a Bengali, from Bihar, a Thakur”, from Piku. Your deadpan dialogue delivery, outshining all others whenever you were on screen, not a mean task when the “others” on the screen in question were a delectably beautiful Deepika Padukone and an absolute Bengali caricature played with such sheer audacity by Amitabh. Two scenes standout as the best, in my opinion. The first, where you lecture Deepika about how selfish the old man is, and advising her that she should find a life for her without the “selfish old man” Amitabh in consideration. After giving her own explanation in her defense, Deepika asks you “ will you marry me?”. Your look, taking a pause from nibbling on your roll, and that dialogue “ Mata kharab nahin hai mera”, was so out of the stereotype, it was simply mind-blowing. And the famous Bengali bedlam that unfolds in their household where everyone discusses everything in a rising crescendo and your initial detachment, then a look of resignation and finally an exasperation that compels you to outshout them all and shout “ Arre, chup, CHUPPPPPPPPPP! Kahaan hai Tulu pump”, left me grinning and made me rewind and play that scene again and again.
To finish the list, I choose Monty. “I am 35, ok ok, am actually 38, but tell everyone that I am 35” and lines like “mera friend mera jaisa, matlab, kya matlab” delivered in trademark Irrfan Khan style, those scenes of having lunch on the office terrace, boasting your bargaining powers and that scene seated on the tetrapod along the Marine Drive (or was it Bandra?) where you break down and cry imagining what you would do if your future wife forbade you to meet with Shruti (Konkana Sen Sharma). And from an apparently meaningless drunken gibberish, how you stole the scene with that brilliant “Take your chance baby”
Video Link Courtesy YouTube.
I thank YouTube for all those videos of yours through which I console myself that you are still around. Then I realize that you are not here with us anymore and I hum Don McLean to myself
“This world was never meant for one as beautiful as you”
