Remembering Irrfan Khan

Was it '87? '88? I was a young boy. There used to be a serial called Katha Sagar on DD -- which would show dramatised versions of short stories written by great writers of the world. Many of you would remember.

There was this Anton Chekhov story 'Ward No. 6' made into three episodes. The story was about a psychiatric doctor who befriends one of the patients in the madhouse (named 'Ward No. 6') because his ramblings would make more sense to him than the so-called sane people around him. The story traces the gradual degradation of the doctor's social standing, eventually landing him in the same ward.

A young adolescent, already struggling to find my standing in my circles, I was deeply affected by this story. The story was an insightful illustration of the fact that what's popular needn't be sensible, nor that what's sensible need to be accepted by the public. Somewhere, the growing child in me identified with those characters -- that doctor who had the intelligence and innocence to not blindly follow a popular judgement but listen to his own thoughts and even with that madman who talked sense. It gave me strength to believe that it's not necessary to agree with the majority to make sense. Secretly -- perhaps -- I had also pledged to myself that I wouldn't go down meekly like that doctor.

Even 30+ years ago, that lean actor with a run-down, deeply sad and intelligent look in his eyes who had played that role so beautifully, had caught my notice. I didn't know his name then and didn't try to find out either. And he remained lost for years after that, making sundry appearances here and there doing often nondescript rolls. It's only after he resurfaced and sky-rocketed into becoming a major star in the last 15 years or so that we came to know his name. He was Irrfan Khan -- the late bloomer.

Yesterday, we dug out those episodes on YouTube and watched them. At least to me, they touched me equally deeply even now. Added to that, the whole minimalism -- almost penury -- of the whole set-up affected me deeply. Those were the times when the actors and directors had nothing except the raw intensity of their performance to narrate a story with multiple layers. Nothing else than an Irrfan Khan could have essayed that role so completely. To me -- that schoolboy, Irrfan

was already a star even when he wasn't one.

To the ocean of tears that's been created in the last 24 hours by his billion fans, I join in with little drop of tribute. In lamenting his premature passing and the death of those innumerable roles that will never get played as only Irrfan could have.