A tribute to an unforgettable gem
How do you explain a loss that is so personal and yet so public? What are the set rules for grieving a stranger who is not really a stranger? Anybody who has enjoyed Irrfan saab’s work — be it in Chandrakanta (1994) or The Warrior (2001) or Rog (2005) or Yeh Saali Zindagi (2011) or Hindi Medium (2017) — would naturally experience a strange mix of emotions right now.
On one hand, you are shocked that somebody so gifted can leave the stage at the age of 53. On another hand, you are coming to terms with finality; death can happen to anyone at any given point of time. It’s a very humbling experience. To make matters worse, you were already angry at 2020 for being so cruel. We hear about people dying everyday. We are almost immune to it now. Maybe that’s why we could have done without this piece of news.
You are sad, helpless, angry but filled with love — all in one. Like I said, a strange mix of emotions.
The only saving grace is you aren’t alone in this.
Everybody around you feels connected by the gravity of sudden demise. And what’s noteworthy is an unexplained desire to cry for someone you’d have never met anyway.
Fortunately, I interviewed Irrfan saab four times during my stint in mid-day. Apart from being an exceptionally talented actor, he was a warm and humorous person; every encounter was marked by his effortless geniality. He’d look at you with a sense of familiarity and shake your hands firmly. The first time I met him was in 2012 during a film promotion and the last instance unfolded at the Jagran Film Festival in 2014. The following year, I said goodbye to entertainment journalism.
After reading about his departure today, I went through my old collection of interview recordings — something I’ve hardly done in the past five years. To my relief and solace, I heard the man speak in his inimitable style. Can you imagine anybody selling talktime the way he did for Hutch? Exactly. Although it’s impossible to forget an actor like him, it’s through close interactions, we get a peek at the man behind the screen. Unlike most actors in Bollywood, he never put on any airs. My best guess is he liked being himself: calm, friendly and straightforward.
If you think about it, he was one of the very few Indian actors to truly crossover to international cinema but made the least noise. When I asked him how he bagged a role in the celebrated Ang Lee movie. He played it down by saying that he was in New York at the time working on the TV series In Treatment (2008-12) and got a call asking whether he’d be interested in the Life of Pi script. “Maine mundi hila di,” he said, cutely nodding his head.
In his answers, he was self-effacing without losing the strength of objectivity. His art understandably came from the right place — listening to his heart as far as film projects were concerned — and it clearly showed in the person he was. When I told him that in the galaxy of stars, it must feel nice to be an actor, he didn’t fully agree. His explanation threw light on how he was in a race of his own making; he wasn’t competing with anyone else: “Words like ‘actors’ and ‘stars’ are used to box us into categories. If somebody is a star, it means that people find something in them that they miss in their lives. Without the audience, there is neither an ‘actor’ nor a ‘star’.”
Irrfan saab understood the value of words as much as he acknowledged the necessity of labour. While rolling his own cigarette in a vast room at a fancy hotel in Juhu, he said matter-of-factly, as director Tigmanshu Dhulia sunk into the nearby sofa, that he totally believes in those he works with. Paan Singh Tomar (2012) was a success because it came out exactly like each member of the team intended it to. It’s common amongst filmwallahs to heap praises on their colleagues but what set Irrfan saab apart from his peers was his reasoning. If he said he loved working with Tabu or Mahi Gill or Jimmy Shergill, he would add a point or two on what made them unique on the sets. No template PR bullshit for him.
When he played a Malayali character in The Lunchbox (2013), who spoke accented Hindi without making a mockery in the glorious tradition of Hindi cinema, the ‘madrasi’ in me felt validated. When he explains his climactic decision in a letter, your eyes are filled with tears. But you don’t know why though. And therein lies the power of cinema. And therein lies the power of a great actor who used his voice so elegantly.
Speaking of which, in his interviews, his vocabulary had a perfect mix of English, Hindi and Urdu. There was something humane about him that shone so brightly. Being level-headed can be a tough ask in a hollow industry but he didn’t seem to have a problem. There was a natural flow in his being. If you google his name today along with ‘controversy’, you’ll find hardly anything except his outspokenness against religious extremism. For all his softness, he wouldn’t tolerate nonsense and stood for his views long before it became a cool factor on Twitter.
Last afternoon, I read on Google News alert that he had been admitted to a hospital in Mumbai. I assumed it to be a routine checkup given his recent health battles. This afternoon, when his name started trending online, my mind quickly cut to that phone call scene from The Namesake (2006), following which we get to know that his character has passed away. Unlike the book, there is an element of shock-and-surprise in his passage there. If only that element hadn’t replicated in real life as well.
Time is of huge essence and for an actor, screentime matters. The audience’s memory is precarious, so, the longer you are seen, the better. Again, he chose to differ. “I don’t care about my screentime. Every character in a story plays their part. Whether it’s long or short, without a character, the movie remains incomplete,” he mused about his lack of interest in post-production. In other words, he loved his job but wasn’t attached to its non-spiritual bits.
Lastly, in an era marked by divisive notions, it’s rather incredible to witness a collective outpour of sorrow on so many platforms. The last time this happened, at least on social media, was when Dr. Kalam passed away. If there are two messages we can draw from Irrfan saab’s public journey, it could be this: the work you leave behind matters a lot and so does the amount of love you invoke in strangers who are not really strangers.
