It is sort of a 12 months that Bollywood actor Irrfan Khan handed away, however his followers nonetheless keep in mind him dearly and preserve sharing his older movies. Recently, we obtained our fingers on a video of the late actor performing a play at Shri Ram Centre in Delhi throughout his time on the National School of Drama in 1987. In the play, Irrfan essayed the position of Russian revolutionary chief Vladimir Lenin.
The video clip is from the teleplay ‘Laal Ghaas Par Neele Ghode’ which aired on Doordarshan. It was a Hindi adaptation of the Russian play Blue Horses On Red Grass, by Mikhail Shatrov. Irrfan’s character Lenin was a Russian revolutionary who served as head of presidency of Soviet Russia from 1917 to 1924 and of the Soviet Union from 1922 to 1924.
In the play, Irrfan co-starred along with his then batchmates Sutapa Sikdar and Mita Vashisht. He later married Sutapa on February 23, 1995. Looking again at her life with Irrfan, Sutapa had earlier written, “It’s difficult to explain what a wondrous, beautiful, overwhelming, painful and exciting this journey has been. I find this 2 and 1/2 years to have been an interlude, which had it’s own beginning, middle and culmination with Irrfan helming the role of the orchestra conductor, separate from the 35 years of our companionship, ours was not a marriage, it was a union.”
Irrfan’s co-star and NSD batchmate, Mita Vashisht remembered him as a mischievous man. After his demise, she shared with The Indian Express, “He had this shy mischief about him and used to relentlessly pull my leg and, since I had long hair, give my plaits a tug or two. There was a seriousness about him that’s well known but he also had a sense of mischief which we see in his roles.” She added, “We were classmates for three years, living together 24×7, travelling on an educational trip to Manipur, eating, brushing our teeth and fighting with each other, and it was almost like a blood relationship. A part of us has died.”
Irrfan died in Mumbai on April 29, 2020, on the age of 54. He fought a protracted battle with neuroendocrine tumour.