Anup Singh on Irrfan Khan: ‘He was a creative fabulation in the realm of a director’s spirit’

Writer-filmmaker Anup Singh was devastated when actor Irrfan Khan passed away on April 29, 2020. Not only had Singh directed Khan in the films Qissa: The Tale of a Lonely Ghost (2013) and The Song of Scorpions (2017) but they had also forged a profound friendship. Singh channelized his grief into writing the book Irrfan: Dialogues with the Wind (2022) , published by Copper Coin with a foreword from actor Amitabh Bachchan. This book is as much about Singh’s approach to filmmaking as it is about Khan’s approach to acting. Khan’s death brought to an end his magnificent career in theatre, television and films spanning three decades. On the occasion of his death anniversary, we bring you an interview with Singh who speaks about their personal and professional association with deep love. Excerpts:

Your book is a treasure. It is poetic and philosophical, even meditative one might say. Tell us how you stumbled upon or settled into the book’s narrative voice.

I am very pleased that you heard a voice speaking to you. In a director’s mind, an actor is always – how shall I put this – a border being. There is a deference for the actor as a person, an esteem for the artist he or she is, but the actor is also a creative fabulation in the realm of a director’s spirit. All these aspects of an actor are constantly in dispute but, in the best of circumstances, they rally together in the work. After Irrfan’s passing, I wanted to retain the palpable presence that he was as a person, but, of course, hour by hour, he was becoming more and more of a memory. And memory is selective and, therefore, transformative. I was very aware of that.

When I started writing about him, my conscious attempt was to document his presence. I put down all that came to me: a gesture, certain words, a look. Often, the gestures and words that came to me initially, would reappear later with a different force, a different emphasis. I would write those down too. Memories overwhelmed me and each memory had its variations. Memories folded within memories. And, then, when I read the words, I had put down, I saw that every word carried a charge of grief, a visceral vibration of loss. The border between what Irrfan and I had lived together and the Irrfan emerging now in my writing was smudged forever, I realized. The living, breathing Irrfan had filled me with curiosity, kindled a sense of adventure in my most banal daily routines and set my imagination ablaze. Each moment was a rejoicing in life, not a mourning. So, I started rewriting again, setting my grief at his death in conflict with the joie de vivre that our working together and our friendship was.

My narrative voice, then, is not simply mine. There is a plethora of voices that came together in the final writing. What I hope you hear now is the music of both Irrfan’s and my voice. Voices, because in the ten years or so that we knew each other, our voices changed, often regressed but also matured, and took on the grain of abundance of the life that we shared.

The book is not simply about his personality or his acting. It’s about his inner world, and it’s also a tribute to your friendship. I was crying as I read it. What gave you the courage to write?

What gave me the courage to write? Well, Irrfan, of course! His deep and passionate curiosity about everything. One of the joys of working with Irrfan, of spending time with him was that every time we met his wild curiosity would be probing into some new object, a new idea, a book, a poem, a new song. He could start talking about bees and their constant humming from flower to flower and compare that way of living with, let’s say, a spider that wove its web and simply waited. This would lead him to a long debate and evaluation of what kind of living might be the best for an actor. Or, perhaps, a balance between the two?

He might be meditating on a poem. I remember his fascination with Rainer Maria Rilke’s poem “Archaic Torso of Apollo”. It’s a poem about a statue with no head. Just its torso remains. While shooting The Song of Scorpions, he kept reading the poem until he had it by heart. He kept thinking about some of its lines:

“…And yet his torso is still suffused with brilliance from inside, like a lamp, in which his gaze, now turned to low,

gleams in all its power. Otherwise the curved breast could not dazzle you so, nor could a smile run through the placid hips and thighs to that dark centre where procreation flared.”

His attempt was to find a way to achieve that same ‘brilliance from inside’ in his body and depend less on the face for his performance in this film. He kept improvising relentlessly with the way he should move in the film until he felt that the poem had finally ignited a new energy in his gestures.

While writing my book, I have tried to remain true to this way of looking. I have allowed every moment between us to unfold to its fullest. My attempt in the book has not been simply to give flesh and bone to memories, but just as importantly to evoke the spirit, the vigorous affirmation of life that was Irrfan’s. So, if there’s courage in the writing, it’s something I learned from Irrfan.

You write about a great love of Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan that Irrfan and you shared with each other. Could you name some of those songs so that our readers can make a playlist and listen?

Answer: Here are some that I remember immediately – Main Khayal Hoon Kissi Aur Ka, Kehna Ghalat Ghalat Toh Chupaana Sahi Sahi, Tum Ek Gorakh Dhanda Ho, Ni Main Jana Jogi De Naal, Akhiyan Udeek Diyan, Kiven Mukhre Ton Nazra Hatawan, Mae Ni Mae Mere Geetan De Nainan Vicch, Ranjha Jogi Ho Gaya, Nit Khair Manga Sohneya Main Teri, Kisey Da Yaar Na Vicchde” 

Actor Mita Vashisht has been a significant part of your personal and professional journey with Irrfan. Would you mind sharing that with us?

My first sense of the transformation that an actor could set in motion in our life came from watching Mita performing. I had been an assistant director on two films and a scriptwriter on one film that we worked on together with Mani Kaul. And then two more films with Kumar Shahani.

I will always hold that memory as sacred as I learned some magical things about acting from her. And I will always be grateful to her because she was the one who introduced me to Irrfan. They were classmates at National School of Drama and she reached out to him when we were working on a short film for television. Later, perhaps ten years later, when I wanted to reach Irrfan for Qissa and could find no way to contact him, again it was Mita who found a way to bring us together.

Irrfan had turned down the offer to play Umber Singh in Qissa after your first narration. He found the character too dark, and utterly without hope. But you managed to convince him. How did you earn his trust?

When I first narrated the script of Qissa to Irrfan, he said that it would haunt him, but he was not ready at the moment to do such a dark film. After he left, I thought about what he had said about the film’s darkness. It seemed to me that I had failed somehow to present the tale to him the way I saw it. I called him and requested that he give me 15 minutes. He asked me to come see him on the next day, which I did. Since we both loved the music of Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, I asked Irrfan if he had ever watched some videos of Nusrat Saab singing. He had, of course. I, then, said to him that he must have noticed how Nusrat Saab’s face changes violently when he sings. His face contorts and sometimes it looks grotesquely distorted by the violent energy that his singing demands. His face might look frightful at moments, but the voice that comes out of him is one of the most sublime we have ever heard. That’s how I see the film, I said to Irrfan. He understood immediately and promptly said ‘Yes’ to doing the film!

When you look back at the experience of working with him on The Song of Scorpions, what strikes you as a memory that will always remain with you? 

Every moment stays with me. That’s not an exaggeration. But, if I were to think of one particular memory which not only stays with me but continues to bring an expanse to my life, it’s that one moment in our shoot when a flock of Siberian cranes with their blaring calls started circling the site where we were shooting in the desert of Jaisalmer. I have written about this incident in great detail in my book, but, perhaps, I could give a brief account of it here because it reveals very simply the wondrous quality of Irrfan as a human being. The birds hovered above us loud and clamorous for hours, their shadows shattering the sunlight for us and making our shoot impossible. I was terrified that we would lose one whole day in our very tight schedule. We had tried everything to scare off the birds but they seemed obsessed by the colourfully dressed crew and the large equipment. Finally, after a few hours, when we were all ready to give up, I saw Irrfan walking up a sand dune with a kite in his hands.

He sent the kite swishing into the sky. The birds circled the fluttering kite, but kept their distance. Irrfan kept on reeling out the string, allowing the wind to take the kite further and further away. After a while, we saw Irrfan start down the sand dune and he kept walking into the desert until he was just a remote blur. There, having lured the birds away from the shoot with his kite, he suddenly cut the string. We all watched the kite flicker and disappear into the sky and it took the birds with it. Under the large sky, we saw the distant, tiny figure of Irrfan watching them vanish. Strangely, that moment brought a strange hush to all of us. It was like a shaman’s dialogue with the universe. It filled us with a quiet awe. This quiet, spellbinding moment constantly brings to me the vastness that life really is. This vastness in my life is Irrfan’s gift.

What did the process of writing this book do for you? Did it help you grieve and heal, or did you feel stressed about expectations that people might have from it?

It was very much a healing process. In a way, yes. But the healing has also brought me to something puzzling in my life. On the one hand, the writing of the book has made me accept that Irrfan and I will no longer make any more films together. But that acceptance has also, bewildering to me, ignited my imagination again. I have already completed one script after his death. This one was to be our next film. I wrote it as though possessed because in the writing I could see how Irrfan might dance dressed like Krishna’s Radha or how he might hesitate, linger and take his time in the articulating of a dialogue. While writing it, I felt we were working together again.

I have now started writing another one. Again, this is based on a story we had discussed passionately. To me, it’s like Irrfan and I are hard at work together again. What will happen with these scripts? Well, I await an actor whose one gesture will not remind me of Irrfan, but give me a sense that this is that one gesture that would have filled Irrfan with joy. I wrote the book committed to sharing my experiences of Irrfan’s celebration of life and his art. I knew I was writing with devotion and dedication to him. So, no, I never felt any stress about the expectations that people might have from such a book. I dreamed that in my story-telling about Irrfan and the choice of language that emerged in the writing, they would be able to feel the rhythm of Irrfan’s spirit. That is my hope.

How has his family responded to the book?

They have been deeply nurturing and wholeheartedly supportive. When Irrfan’s wife, Sutapa Sikdar first read the book, she immediately wrote to me, saying that the truth and beauty of the book had deeply moved her. And, when the book was finally published just a few days after Irrfan’s birthday, she said in an interview, **“**It’s the best birthday gift for Irrfan that I could think of. It captures his spirit beautifully and in a poignant and poetic way.”

Chintan Girish Modi is a writer, journalist, commentator, and book reviewer

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