Kal Penn writes to Irrfan Khan's son, Babil: 'The Namesake brought me greatest artistic happiness'

Irrfan Khan’s son Babil said he was left ‘speechless’ when actor Kal Penn reached out to him. Penn, who worked alongside Khan in Mira Nair’s The Namesake, said that he wasn’t sure how to get in touch with Khan’s family, but was glad that he finally could after Babil presumably reached out to him. Khan passed away  at 53 in April 2020 after a long battle against cancer. Penn, in the message, thanked Babil for reaching out to him and said that The Namesake was the project that he was “most proud of” and which bought him the ‘greatest artistic happiness’. “I’ve thought of you two and your mom a lot this past year and wasn’t sure how to get in touch to share my love and gratitude. It really means so much to me that you reached you.” Penn asked Babil to meet him the next time he visits New York. Reacting to this, Babil wrote on his Instagram Stories, “What is happening? How to write a reply when you’re speechless? [caption id=“attachment_9357031” align=“alignnone” width=“738”] Babil shared Kal Penn’s message to him about Irrfan (Photo: Babil/Instagram)[/caption] Penn had previously shared a condolences post for Irrfan. He wrote, “Never seen someone use the beats of silence so beautifully to convey so much about who we are.”

Kal had played Gogol, son of Khan’s character Ashoke Ganguli, in The Namesake. Based on Jhumpa Lahiri’s novel of the same name, the film featured Tabu as Irrfan’s wife and Sahira Nair as his daughter. The film depicted the struggles of a couple (Irrfan and Tabu), first-generation immigrants of Bengal to the US and their American-born kids.