Nayandeep Rakshit (DNA; October 27, 2017)

Recently, Nawazuddin Siddiqui was in the news for his shocking revelations about his relationships and sexcapades in his biography — An Ordinary Life: A Memoir. While there is an ongoing war of words between Nawaz and Niharika Singh, we caught up with Nawaz’s arch-rival Irrfan Khan and asked him if he was keen to get a biography written.

He brushes off the idea saying, “If you ask about me getting my own biography, I cannot do it. Because for me, to go around praising myself is the most boring thing to do.” He adds, “For the last four years, Penguin publishers are after me to write my story. They are now exhausted trying.”

NO CONTROVERSY
What’s stopping him, we ask. “I don’t want someone sensationalizing episodes of my life and writing about it that way. Then getting people to talk about it and making it news, will be the last thing I would do,” he asserts. We wonder whether that is a jibe at Nawaz. History has it that the two have been at loggerheads for quite some time now.

'IT CANNOT BE AT THE CENTRE OF IT'
The only way to get him to be part of biography is by moving the focus from him. “I cannot be at the centre of it. If I get someone who will write it for me, without me, where I just happen to be and they concentrate more on my times, I will definitely be interested.” Rather than the controversial tidbits, Irrfan wants his biography to focus on other key episodes and anecdotes from his life. “I am from a feudal background, we used to manage in a one-bedroom-hall house...what my father used to do and how things slowly happened — if somebody can have a take on that, I would love to see that. But it should not be about me,” he says.

NO BIOPIC EITHER
Not just a book, he feels his story won’t even make for an interesting film script. “It has become a trend and now, a formula. So no, a biopic on my life would be a mistake.”