Sahabzade Irrfan

Death is inevitable they say .. Death has many faces but the face of truth it has ... is the loss of value . Irrfan Khan who left us on April 29 ,2020 was a face which was a loss, a clear loss considering the incandescent nature of his versatility. He was a talent which not many had seen or understood before , and his presence in both national and international scene was magnanimous.

Philosophers have debated to death what kind of loss death represents. And for whom. The person dying or those who left behind ? A whole tradition , from Socrates to Montaigne is devoted to preparing us for the good death . For Montaigne , " premeditation of death is a premeditation of freedom  " : Somehow knowing how to die liberates us from subjection & constraint . But even the composed Montaigne , who thought contemplating death made life more vivid & meaningful, could not easily reconcile to the death of his brilliant 32 year old friend, the young La Boetie ,author of  The Discourse of Voluntary Servitude , an analysis of the hypnosis tyrants can produce in their subjects . The fact that La Boetie was only 32 when he died made the grief harder , even in an age where dying young was not rare. Coping with the prospect of someone else's death is, in most cases , harder than contemplating your own.

But what is the loss we mourn , especially in the case of a brilliant genius like Irrfan , who attained the pinnacle of what art could achieve ? He leaves a void in this world. In part, the sense of loss that accompanies every artiste is the sense of their irreplaceability.  They are,  in some deep sense , unique. But it is also a uniqueness that touches everyone. It is universal. What makes it universal is that its achievement and value is something all of us can acknowledge. It lifts us out of our egotisms & narcissisms to give us a glimpse of what artistic excellence looks like. We regret his passing early since the magnitude of his achievement makes you wonder what other possibilities might have been.

It is difficult to write someone's obituary when everything you might want to say is already in public domain. It becomes even more difficult when the actor in question is some one like Irrfan Khan, a rare gem in history of Hindi Cinema , a so-called supporting actor who rose to mainstream stardom , and played lead roles in commercially successful films like Hindi Medium and Piku. Perhaps , only Irrfan could have done that. He created a path for others to follow -  a path cemented with sheer hard work , relentless struggle and redoubtable performances.

His beginnings were far from comfortable . His struggle for recognition could inspire a film script. Many serials, art-house films, years of unending struggle in the ruthless metropolis that Mumbai stands for , finally things began to change for him with Haasil (2003) where he played a dark role. 

If you look at Irrfan's body of work , which spans student diploma films and television serials amongst other things , it is indicative of the most important thing that actors without a pedigree have had to learn in order to survive in Mumbai : To wait . The art of waiting makes for a good teacher, perhaps. Maybe , it is this act of waiting that further magnified his performances. He gave everything to his on-screen portrayals that all those years of waiting had taught him. Of course , lest we forget,behind the success of one Irrfan Khan, there are many stories of failure - however lost in the alleys of Mumbai. 

Irrfan's success story is a testimony to his acting talent , which subverted box - office norms. His work abroad helped to further strengthen his prospects for the country. It is rather sad that some of our finest have to wait for Hollywood or western validation to receive their rightful dues at home. 

Can you think of Life of Pie (2012) without Irrfan? He is barely there in the film, which is otherwise dominated by a blitzkrieg of events and great visual effects , yet it his dialogues in the end that many left the theatre with.   

A lot of Irrfan's admirers and colleagues have said that the news of his death has left them "numb". There is no better word to articulate the sense of abandonment - of being unable to watch him light up the screen anymore. Yours truly also belongs to the same category - the sense of loss is so overwhelming ... It is this vacuum that has put Irrfan in the pantheon of greats of the industry which he has made so poor by leaving !!