Irrfan Khan Death Anniversary: A person like Irrfan Khan is remembered

Irrfan Khan declared dead after two-year-long battle with neuroendocrine tumour, life and death judged like two petty criminals in the court of time.

By Bollyy 29 Apr 2025 in Gossip Ali Peter John

New Update

Listen to this article

0.75x 1x 1.5x

00:00 / 00:00

The morning Irrfan Khan was declared dead after a two-year long battle with neuroendocrine tumor, life and death were judged in the court of time like two petty criminals who had committed a big crime and did not know how to hide their faces and snatched away the masks of two other criminals who were wearing them due to the ongoing pandemic to protect their faces. The charge against life was that it did not give Irrfan Khan enough time to prove his talent, and the charge against death was that it had played a bad game with Irrfan Khan and was in a hurry to pick it up and take him away when he had almost won the battle. In the evening, when Irrfan Khan was buried in the Versova Kabristan, the court of time had found both life and death guilty and had given the verdict that they were hanged to death and still hang alive till the end of time.

Some men (and women) are born to be part of a crowd and disappear without a life of their own. Some are born neither here nor there. There are others who are born as fence-sitting experts, which doesn't matter much, and is dangerous too. And there are some who are created to stand and shine in all their splendor and sometimes even make their creator wonder how he made them or whether he made them or some power greater than them. Sahibzaade Irrfan Khan certainly belonged to the last category and left his mark on the world, a mark I am sure future generations will look up to and remember whenever there is talk about great men and especially great actors.

Irrfan was born in a middle-class family in Jaipur. He received a good education, thanks to his mother and decided to play cricket for India. And when he saw that he could not make it to the top in cricket, he decided to become an actor and joined the National School of Drama, with the encouragement and blessings of his mother, Saeeda Begum. Within months after joining NSD, he was recognised as an actor with tremendous potential and potential. Like most young and talented actors, Irrfan too took the Rajdhani Express to the city of dreams. And like most other actors, it was a season of severe struggle for him too, but his talent assured him that he would make it a career in the city. If he had faith in it. His talent was right. He soon found work in TV serials and in no time, he was one of the most loved actors on the small screen and was excelling in many serials like 'Chandrakanta'.

'Chanakya', 'The Great Maratha', 'Jai Hanuman', 'Banegi Apna Bane' (It was during the making of this serial, which he also directed that he married Sutapa Sikdar. It was Irrfan Khan who was going to rule in Hindi films and in Hollywood films in the years to come. And the films in which he and his amazing talent made a big difference are 'Haasil', 'Maqbool', 'Life in a Metro', 'Paan Singh Tomar', 'The Lunchbox', Billu Barber', 'Piku', 'Talvar', 'Hindi Medium' and 'Angrezi Medium', which remained his last film and also the highest grossing film of his career despite the pandemic and lockdown (the film flopped due to the corona virus and was a hit when it released on the net during the initial stages of the lockdown). And among the Hollywood films he excelled in 'Slumdog Millionaire'. 'Spider-Man', 'Life of Pi', 'Jurassic World', 'Inferno' and 'No Bed of Roses'. Some of the prominent directors he worked with were Tapan Sinha, Shyam Bansal, Mira Nair and Danny Boyle. He won the National Award in 2011, several other major awards and the Padma Shri.

He had the knack of getting into the skin of any role and breathing life into it. He could take a character like a barber, taxi driver or slumlord and even a character from mythology to the pinnacle and make it worth watching. He could stand supreme or equal when sharing screen space with actors like Amitabh Bachchan, Shah Rukh Khan, Naseeruddin Shah, Anil Kapoor and Deepika Padukone. He was still full of ambitions and dreams and plans and projects. Over - worked, but as I said in the beginning, the two 'criminals', life and death had hatched some kind of conspiracy against him, which they implemented with some kind of frightening quickness and their conspiracy succeeded... In one of his last conversations, Irrfan had said, 'I was in some kind of fast train with all my ambitions, plans and dreams, when I saw a man tapping on my shoulder. It was the TC. He said my journey is over and I have to get off the train at the next station'

People reading this statement would know that Irrfan was indirectly making a reference to his busy and successful life till then and how the tumor had brought his journey to an abrupt halt… If what happened to him last year when he came back home, after he had almost recovered, and what happened at Kokilaben Ambani hospital on the morning of April 29th was not a conspiracy between life and death, tell me what it was! I have no respect for what politicians say, but when leaders like Arvind Kejriwal, Prakash Javadekar, Ashok Gehlot, Vasundhara Raje, Shivraj Singh Chouhan and other politicians paid their tributes to Irrfan, I wanted to believe what they said… I have no scientific reason to believe in heaven, but when thousands of people who were fans and lovers of Irrfan wanted to see him in peace in heaven, I wanted to believe that there was a heaven, at least for Irrfan…

I am slowly losing faith even in some of my best friends in the industry, but when they praised Irrfan on the day of his death, I wanted to believe what they all said about Irrfan… As they were burying Irrfan in the old Kabristan in Versova, near my house, I once again realised the hopelessness of the big struggle called life and it all ends in just a few feet of dust or goes up in billows of fire and smoke, depending on the quality of the wood used and the ghee poured into the wooden logs between which the bodies of the most powerful and mighty and the poorest and even the beggars are burned as fast or as quickly as possible, so that the living can go back and gossip about the dead and resume their businesses and other important and crucial activities…

When they buried Irrfan in that kabristan, I could hear the wind blowing and as if crying. It may sound like my imagination going wild, but I would love to believe that the wind was crying at the demise of a giant of talent like Sahibzaade, Irrfan Khan… A passing thought of my own… I had heard and believed stories about how close the bond between a mother and her son can be. This was proven again in the story between Irrfan’s mother and Irrfan. The ninety-year-old mother, Mrs. Saeeda Begum kept waiting for Irrfan to return to Jaipur and kept saying that her son would win the battle against his illness and return like a son returning from a war. But, that dream of the mother could not come true and she died a disappointed mother and Irrfan too could not bid his mother adieu with good fondness. And less than a week later, the loving son left the whole world behind to join his mother.