Irrfan: A Revolutionary Dream
Gourab Ghosh
Indian cinema has recently lost one of its most dynamic and versatile actors, Irrfan Khan (1967-2020). He was an ordinary man from Jaipur who joined the National School of Drama (NSD) in 1987 with a ‘revolutionary’ dream. A dream that he nurtured as he learnt the craft of acting. At NSD, as his friends, colleagues, and mentors would remember in several obituaries, Irrfan was a promising actor immersed in silence and books. In his heart, unspoken, he carried a dream – that of being an actor ordinary people could come to believe in, that of recognition in world cinema. A revolutionary dream indeed, coming from a common man with no filmy father or a godfather in the notoriously nepotistic Hindi film industry.
I first saw him in 2012 in Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), where he made us believe in his dreams when he said, “Aam aadmi hi hero hota hai” (the common man is the hero). He understood the spirit of JNU and its students. And he, perhaps, wanted to say that he belonged to the revolutionary struggles, too. His fitting portrayal of the Shayer-e-Inquilab (revolutionary poet) Makhdoom Mohiuddin (1908-’69) in 1991 for a televised show, Kahkashan made him quite popular among the audience. Mohiuddin was a revolutionary Urdu poet and the member of the Communist Party of India, who founded the Progressive Writers Union in Hyderabad and led the Telangana movement.
From several anecdotes and interviews, we can say that Irrfan was a progressive man leaning towards the Left as he was gradually exposed to a world of books, theatre, and films. Theatre does this to many of us. Theatre can change one’s perceptions of looking at the world. Irrfan was different. He joined NSD to learn the craft of acting but he fell in love with cinema. But, he did not forget what theatre taught him — to be a revolutionary. He performed as Lenin (1870-1924) in Lal Ghas Per Neele Ghodey based on the Hindi translation (by Uday Prakash) of the Russian play, Blue Horses on Red Grass by the Leninist playwright, Mikhail Shatrov (1932-2010) for the USSR India Festival. Dreams often collide and leave us with strange feelings. Both Lenin and Irrfan died at the age of fifty-three as Irrfan succumbed to a colon infection on 29th April 2020 when the world was celebrating the 150th birth anniversary-month of Lenin.
I first met Irrfan in 2015 at the annual conference of Indian Society for Theatre Research (ISTR) where he was invited as a guest-of-honour. He was already awarded the Padma Shri in 2011 and was an established star of Bombay cinema. I was elected as one of the office bearers of the ISTR committee that year. When my friend and colleague from Theatre Studies, Dr Vibha Sharma, introduced me to him and others as the newly elected member with an experience of queer-left activism, Irrfan looked at me. The same big, expressive eyes looking and making me nervous, as I did not know what to say. I smiled and he smiled back. We spoke very little, but we parted with a firm handshake and I felt that he had become a part of my revolutionary dream. He never forgot the stage or those who helped him in his initial years of struggle. His humility and sense of belonging to his roots was evident throughout his continuing rise to stardom.
We all remember him from his Chandrakanta days. After many years of working on television, he did not leave Mumbai, and neither did he accept defeat easily. He clung to his dream of getting a big breakthrough in films. In many interviews he said that those days were difficult, but he had the belief that he would establish himself not only in Indian cinema, but also in the West. Irrfan became the new face in the West, both in parallel and mainstream films. Only a few of the Indian actors were able to make it from Bollywood to Hollywood.
Through his acting, films, political understanding and unabashed opinions on social issues he became close to ordinary Indians. He became everyone’s hero and enjoyed the same cheers, claps, and whistles that a ‘star’ would receive on screen. From Tigmanshu Dhulia’s Haasil (2003) and Paan Singh Tomar (2012), Vishal Bhardwj’s Maqbool (2004), Mira Nair’s The Namesake (2007), Ritesh Batra’s The Lunchbox (2013), Shoojit Sircar’s Piku (2015) to Nishikant Kamat’s Madaari (2016): Irrfan charmed us with his romance, his realistic portrayals of all sorts of characters, and extraordinary acting. He brought life to all his characters with a solicitous understanding of human life and people’s relationships to society and immediate temporal needs. He successfully established himself as a mainstream Bollywood actor with a finesse of an appeal to global audience. We can rightly call the first twenty years of 2000: The Irrfan era of Bollywood.
Irrfan was the deviant ‘other’ of Bollywood. He decided to drop his surname ‘Khan’ to not only create an identity for himself, but also to create a space for actors like him who would bring both art and commercial cinema together. He was conscious of social evils like caste and religious dogmatism. All of this made him a courageous artist, who could recite “Thakur ka Kuan” at the Jaipur Literary Festival in 2014, to voice his protest against caste discrimination. In 2016, he questioned religious dogmatism in Islam and put forth his own understanding and arguments of Islam. He was proud to be an Indian Muslim, even as he spoke for a secular Indianness, something that today stands threatened. He was an artist-in-revolution of our times.
Irrfan was diagnosed with a neuroendocrine tumour and went under treatment a couple of years ago. He informed his fans and friends of his ill health and penned down his thoughts through social media posts, which showed a different Irrfan. Perhaps the uncertainty of life added more layers to his revolutionary mind. Perhaps Irrfan learned that the other name of revolution is fight. He battled, came back to work and completed a film for us to watch after his death. He is survived by his wife and two sons. His wife, Sutapa Sikdar, who was also his batch mate at NSD and a colleague, a companion for thirty-five years, has written a note in his memory. She writes that the loss is not simply personal for her, as so many people are writing about him and remembering him. It is as though a whole family is mourning someone they loved and felt a connection with. This is true. He belonged to the dreams of common men: Irrfan was a revolutionary dream.
Gourab Ghosh is a queer-left activist. He is also a doctoral candidate of Performance Studies at the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), New Delhi. Read his tribute to Mrinal Sen here. Gourab can be contacted at gourabghosh.jnu@gmail.com.
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