Irrfan Khan.
Bollywood is a glamourous world. They don’t make actors but stars. The stars that people would die for. Less are the actors who would die for art. The film. Irrfan Khan was a mixture of both but he just began.
He was a loner. Someone who preferred to romance art rather than people. He would sink himself into the character to give it life and while his colleagues preferred partying, he would find a calm place, would find a company of a good book. He learnt, unlearnt, relearnt because he never believed that he was enough, as an actor, as a person. He always believed that there is a room for improvement and he would work hard to achieve it. Of course, one can blame his journey for that. He wasn’t someone who made it to the top on a single day.
His journey was carefully built, one step at a time, one tiny character at a time. He just began. He was getting there to be the richest talent of the cinema.
He never found happiness in a single take and he would never give up until he was convinced.
In the 1990s, he had crisp, most of them were blink and miss. A few quality roles he had was overshadowed by the top stars in the film.
In the 2000s, his length and role in the films started to increase and people began to notice him. A few roles brought him the attention he deserved but most of them missed out, blame his choice of making content-oriented films.
He had to wait for years to get into the stardom that he deserved right from the first. He dropped his surname, added ‘r’ for luck and the wide range of roles he played had comedy, dark humour, horror, rage and other emotions that weren’t easy to accomplish. He carried them all effortlessly and had the knack of getting inside our minds. Every single part of his body could act and one might wonder how he could pull things off with such ease.
He was that person in all our life whom we don’t talk about or notice as often but when the person is gone, the void is just too much to handle.
Irrfan, who loved books, had the worst chapter of his life when he turned to the page that had suspense. Lesser did he know that he would develop a tumour that would put his career, something he loved on halt. Still, he enjoyed the mystery that his life unfolded every second. He found happiness in every single thing that happened to him even it was about winning against his cancer, one step at a time.
While fighting, he had his art with him, he wrote, learnt and enjoyed himself and turned into a warrior that he always thought he was.
He was a fighter, and he always knew how to overcome the struggles. Maybe, this time, he thought he had it enough. Maybe, heaven needed him to play the characters that are tailor-made for him.
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He had his weaker moments too. Something nobody would talk now, something he shouldn’t have gotten away with. He was under the scanner for #MeToo as well but unfortunately, you know how things would go in India.
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This is a personal loss for everyone in the industry, for all the fans who loved him for what he was, for all the cinema and art lovers. Because they don’t make actors like Irrfan Khan.
Go well, Irrfan!
