The name isn’t just Khan, but life itself

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The name isn’t just Khan, but life itself

Thursday, 30 April 2020 | Rinku Ghosh / Saimi Sattar | New Delhi

The name isn’t just Khan, but life itself

Oh, we forgot the camera…Remember this journey we took together till we reached land’s end and there was nowhere to go.” That was Irrfan Khan, playing teacher-father Ashok Ganguli in The Namesake, asking his onscreen son to relish life’s best moments that are meant to be felt so deep within that no minute detail could ever be missed for a lifetime. And quite a journey we had with him through the years that saw him emerge as the “real Khan” who made everyday Indian maleness so profoundly delicate, believable, both loveable and abominable at times, but most important of all acceptable and acknowledged, warts and all.

His was a strength in upholding life’s vulnerabilities and living with them. But beneath the twitch of the brow, the vacant stare into the horizon, the momentary burst of passion and then lassoing it back, the half curl of a smile, the wry humour, the long silence and the intensity of his gaze was a man who embodied the Indian soul. Fighting, subtle, gracious, all-absorbing and enduring. Self-effacing even. That’s how the 53-year-old actor passed on, succumbing to a protracted battle with cancer on Wednesday.

Yes, he got under our skin. In the process, he also made us comfortable in our own skin. Something that Hollywood spotted way before, casting him in meaningful roles than circumscribing him within Asian stereotypes. The likes of director Danny Boyle and actress Julia Roberts acknowledged his performances. He had worked with the Japanese and Netflix, too, making him our truly multinational artiste. Of course, one of the starry Khans realised the visceral depth of the actor’s range that endeared him to both masses and classes, casting him as the protagonist in his home production Billu.

Shah Rukh Khan made no qualms about who the actor was in the film and developed a rare friendship that lasted till the very end. SRK helped Irrfan recuperate through an extended treatment regime in London by letting him stay at his house there.

When Jurassic Park (1993) released, Irrfan barely had the money to buy a ticket to watch the film. He later went on to star in the franchise as a part of the Jurassic World (2015), a testament to his determined journey. Khan was an international talent before crossovers became a cinematic fad. He was Everyman before characters like him easily got Rs 100 crore returns at the box office. Be it as the loner wanting companionship but caught in his dilemmas and burdens of the past in The Lunchbox, the frustrated and lustful mid-30ish man with a heart of gold in Life in a Metro, the fiercely determined Paan Singh Tomar or the slacker car service agency head who sorts out a complicated and on-the-wire Piku, you always remember each of Irrfan’s characters with a smile. Simply because he imbued them with a rare humanity and sensitivity, calibrating emotions with such tremendous control that never once did the actor overtake the character. That was his art and in many ways his life. Of course, he stole hearts with a natural flair for comedy in both Hindi Medium and Angrezi Medium, deftly capturing the perennial Indian obsession of defining their self-worth through their language proficiencies. And how can one forget his outings in Vishal Bhardwaj’s Shakespeare adaptations, Maqbool and Haider. When he utters the lines as Roohdaar in Haider (2014), “Darya bhi main, darakht bhi main … Jhelum bhi main, chinar bhi main … dair bhi hoon, haram bhi hoon … Shia bhi hoon, Sunni bhi hoon, main hoon pandit … main tha, main hoon aur main hi rahoonga,” they amplified the consummate ease with which he married all the rasas of abhinaya. He stood out in Maqbool despite the presence of seasoned actors like Naseeruddin Shah, Om Puri, Pankaj Kapoor and Tabu. 

That sure was a jump for the son a wealthy zamindar from Tonk in Rajasthan who had decided to pursue acting as he was fascinated by the craft of Shah.

When someone told him that Shah had graduated from the National School of Drama (NSD), Irrfan got obsessed by the idea and managed to get in. “If NSD, where I learnt the nuances of my craft during 80s, wasn’t there I wouldn’t have been here. It has given me everything,” he told us during the promotions of Hindi Medium.

Much before film promotions became a subsidiary business, Irrfan handled his own PR. He had called us for an interview on the sets of Paan Singh Tomar in Roorkee, doing an interview in his vanity van because the site was the space he inhabited at that moment and he wanted us to be an experiential participant in it rather than giving standard quotes. Once outside on the sets, the professional took over. It was the same soloist attitude that saw him take strong positions on societal matters, particularly against Muslim clerics, without thinking about the consequences on his career,

Some thought he was into intellectualising his role, others thought he was the eternal brooder but Irrfan, in one of the earliest interviews to this paper, insisted he never thought so much. “I apply no method, I just follow examples from real life, observe people around me, listen to their stories. A character comes alive with emotion and that cannot be taught but felt,” he had told us on the sets of Paan Singh Tomar. Of course, he interpreted the world through his world of books as he was a voracious reader.   

If anything, cancer made him philosophical and a feisty warrior. He never forget his fans and would reach out to them with his heartfelt notes on social media and email, talking about the magic of life. In a tweet quoting author Margaret he reminded us that “Life is under no obligation to give us what we expect.”

Irrfan had tried many different things from business to service to TV serials before joining the film industry but soon realised that these did not interest him. So he chased his dream, giving up privileges he could have had. “I understood that till the time I enjoy doing something I cannot do it continuously. If you are bored out of your wits within six months, how can you continue to do it for the rest of your life?” he had said. And he did something he loved with a passion... till his last breath.

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