Aseem Chhabra on Irrfan Khan’s bout with illness and what makes the veteran actor stand apart from the rest of his peers
MUMBAI MIRROR (January 5, 2020)

It is hard to say when Irrfan Khan fell ill. Filmmaker Tigmanshu Dhulia told me he had suddenly begun to lose weight and that had caused concern. “He loves to eat a lot, but he’s so careful with his weight and what he actually eats,” Tishu said a few months after Irrfan had made the devastating announcement. “Especially now that he has become a star, he watches what he eats. He was growing his own organic vegetables. Pata nahi usko yeh saala cancer kaise ho gaya (I don’t how he got this damn cancer).”

Varun Gautam, Irrfan’s friend from his Jaipur days, told me that in the last few years the actor had gotten very busy with his work and it was hard to connect and spend time with him. “My Irrfan was lost in a jungle for the past couple of years,” he says, with tears welling up in his eyes. “Mera Irrfan badal gaya tha. (My Irrfan had changed.) He was not the Irrfan I knew. Irrfan’s real happiness is in flying kites and thinking, spending time in his farmhouse [in Nasik], watching a good film, listening to a song.”

“He was not just busy but he was losing himself,” Varun says. “The work took more of his time, more travelling, less sleep and yet he was making more money. He recently told me that he had forgotten he hadn’t come here to earn money.” Varun learned about Irrfan’s illness when one day he received a phone call from Sutapa. This was sometime before Irrfan officially announced his illness. “She said doctors had found some spots inside him,” he recalls. “Then she said, ‘You have always seen good things in his future. I hope nothing fatal will happen.’ So I assured her that he would be okay. Even if the doctors are concerned, he will still stay alive. He’s not going to die. I have been very confident that he will be okay.”

For a couple of months after Irrfan left for his treatment, there was near silence from his end. And then he spoke to a couple of journalists. Much of the interviews were focused on this new phase in his life. He was reflecting on all the good he had experienced in his life and seemed to be accepting whatever the future had in store for him.

Friends of Irrfan I interviewed, people who had met him in London, all seemed to suggest how positive he was about life in general. Shailja Kejriwal told me that in between treatment, Irrfan and Sutapa would sometimes go to cafes in London and even occasionally go watch plays.

Tigmanshu Dhulia told me that Irrfan had been responding well to the treatment and his weight loss was under control. But perhaps the most encouraging news about Irrfan I heard was from Sudhir Mishra. Late in August 2018, I met Sudhir in Delhi to talk about this book. He said that he had heard that Irrfan had recently been given the narration of “Hindi Medium 2” (now referred to as Angrezi Medium and directed by Homi Adajania).

That was the first clear indication that Irrfan was getting better and he was planning to be back to work in films. Angrezi Medium is set to be released in early 2020.

Irrfan and Sutapa were back in India in early 2019, much to the relief of his fans and just about everyone in the Hindi film industry. When he returned from London, there were speculations that he would still take some time to recuperate. But Irrfan’s desire to get back to work and, of course, the film’s schedule, took him to Udaipur to shoot Angrezi Medium, his first project after nearly a year. His cancer treatment was done and reports indicated he had been given a clean chit by his doctors.

But extra care was taken while he was on the set — from breaks he had to take to regain energy, to a quieter residential stay, away from five-star hotels that he found noisy and the special organic foods flown in for him from Mumbai. After Angrezi Medium’s London schedule, Irrfan spent some time in the city with his family. Reports indicated that he was on a private holiday. Later in September the paparazzi tracked Irrfan at Mumbai airport. He was being pushed in a wheelchair, while he had covered his face.

A different kind of warrior

It will take Irrfan a while to get back to normal life. But Irrfan’s magic as a performer on-screen is there for us to see and appreciate. He has already given us such a treasure trove of performances that should be revisited time and again. Even when we know how an older film of his will shape up, it is pure joy to watch and understand how this man acts, how he continues to surprise his directors, co-actors and, of course, the audience.

His friend and director Anup Singh refers to the secrets that Irrfan carries with him that he slowly reveals as he acts before the camera. For instance, in a scene that requires anger and confrontation with another character, most actors would finish off their enemy with a stroke. They would express anger by shouting or come up with a big gesture and finish off their task. But Irrfan is a different kind of warrior, according to Anup, who actually enjoys the kill.

“You might not even feel his first blow,” Anup adds. “You then realise that you are bleeding, and he will probe into the bleeding, the wound, go deeper and deeper. And then finally he will pull your heart out.”

So Irrfan’s greatest quality as an actor is that he never reveals all his cards at once, but he slowly gives you small tastes of what his entire performance will be like. There is no readymade idea about Irrfan’s character that is revealed to us. Instead, his gestures, look, postures, every breath he takes construct the character and all of it before our eyes. By the time he speaks his first few words, you begin to sense the rhythm of the performance. That is the beauty of Irrfan, the actor. He brings a certain musicality in his performance.

In his finest performances, aided by good writing, and strong direction, it is never easy to say what kind of a character he is. One can never typecast an actor like Irrfan. In films like Qissa: The Tale of a Lonely Ghost, No Bed of Roses, Maqbool or even The Lunchbox, where his Saajan breaks Ila’s (Nimrat Kaur) heart by not meeting her at the planned date, Irrfan informs us not to dislike his characters, but to understand their circumstances, their limitations and the reasons behind their actions. Instead, he always brings out the humanity of his characters. We sympathise with them even when, on the surface, their actions may not be good.

It is this quality of Irrfan Khan, the actor — the best we have — that makes him stand apart from his peers. A quality that we should cherish and celebrate.

When Vipin Sharma had first visited Irrfan’s hospital room in London, the actor and his wife were not there. The receptionist informed him that Irrfan and Sutapa had stepped out to get coffee. “On the bed I saw a book by Rumi lying open, upside down. I will never forget that image. I wish I had taken a photograph of that. I felt very good. The Rumi book was upside down and I realised, this is Irrfan. It is the ‘Rumi’ state of mind that has taken Irrfan through the toughest and the most uncertain period of his life, and perhaps these words, from the 13th century Persian poet’s poem, “Life and Death”, are of special significance:

why talk about all the known and the unknown see how the unknown merges into the known why think separately of this life and the next when one is born from the last

Excerpted with permission from Irrfan Khan: The Man, The Dreamer, The Star.

Published by Rupa Books

MUMBAI MIRROR (July 5, 2018)

Priyanka had spent her teenage years in the US. And she had naturally acquired an American accent at the schools where she studied. ‘It was an honest American accent which she had picked up naturally,’ Merchant says while speaking to me about training the contestants. ‘Nothing was put on. When you are that young, you are impressionable and you pick up the accent you are hearing all around you.’

But knocking out Priyanka’s American accent became quite a challenge for Sabira Merchant. ‘She had that kind of a nasal twang. I told her if she was going to represent India, she could not come across as a Yankee sounding person. You have to sound Indian in front of the crowd or at least you should get a global English accent and not American English.’

And Priyanka worked hard at it. At that time Merchant was teaching at Mumbai’s SNDT University and she recalls Priyanka even following her there. ‘And I would be like, “Now Priyanka we have done enough work. You can relax, you are okay.” And she would say, “No, no, just one more question.” She was so bent on improving herself. She was so keen that it was just unbelievable.’

But Merchant also found Priyanka a bit childish, not unusual for an excited teenager. ‘She was always rushing into things,’ Merchant says. In comparison, Lara Dutta was always very mature and had a natural, yet modulated voice. One reason could be that Lara was already 21 years old in the fall of 1999, while Priyanka was just 17. ‘She (Lara) spoke very well. And she had the gift of the gab. Her vocabulary and choice of words was excellent. I worked very little with her, just to teach her not to do certain things.’

That year, the Miss India contest was held in Pune at the Poona Club. The date was 15 January 2000. The contestants faced a range of celebrity judges — actors Shah Rukh Khan, Juhi Chawla and Waheeda Rehman; cricketer Mohammed Azharuddin; media moghul and film producer Pritish Nandy; painter Anjolie Ela Menon, the then founder-chairman of Zee Media (and now Rajya Sabha MP) Subhash Chandra (Goel); fashion designer and perfume queen Carolina Herrera; and Marcus Swarovski, the great-great-grandnephew of the founder of the Austrian crystal company.

It was a day-long competition that started early in the morning, and included the swimsuit round. Finally, in the evening, the contestants faced the judges. Actors Rahul Khanna and Malaika Arora were the emcees. Each contestant picked the name of one judge to ask her a question. According to one news report, Juhi Chawla asked one contestant, ‘If you were granted a sixth sense, what would you like it to be? The contestant was stumped, but then she responded, ‘I would like to be a magician.’

The same report said that Shah Rukh Khan asked a question to another contestant. The report failed to mention that the contestant was Priyanka Chopra. But then again, Priyanka was just a regular contestant at that time, not the star she is now. There is a YouTube video of the classic moment — 17-year-old Priyanka wearing a leather jacket (all contestants dressed alike for this round, and their clothes for the day of the pageant were provided by the organizers), with her hair open, facing Khan who was already a huge star then, having acted in films such as Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge (1995), Kuch Kuch Hota Hai (1998), Dil Se (1998), Karan Arjun (1995) and so many more hits.

Shah Rukh started his long question by saying, ‘I am as nervous as you are, I go meek in the presence of beauty.’ And then, he posed the long question, ‘Hypothetically, if you were to marry one of the following, who will it be? An Indian sportsman, like Azhar bhai — who would take you all around the world, make your country proud and make you swell with pride. Or an artistic businessman with a difficult name to pronounce like Swarovski, who would bedeck you with jewels and fine necklaces and you would never have to buy a chandelier for your house ever again. Or a Hindi film star like me, who has nothing better to do than to give you a complicated multiple-choice question about a hypothetical wedding like this.’ Then he added, ‘And before you answer, let me tell you, whatever your answer is, none of it will prejudice my marks for you. I am sure Azhar Bhai and Swarovski won’t mind.’

Priyanka kept a smile on her face, trying hard not to show any signs of nervousness. A girl from Bareilly was suddenly talking to Shah Rukh Khan in public. She held her breath, thought quickly and responded, ‘If I was to choose one of these three very difficult choices, I think I would go to a great Indian sportsman.’ People cheered, and Priyanka continued, ‘Because when I come back home, or when he comes back home, I know I will be there to be his support to tell him I am proud of him, just as India is. To be able to tell him, “Hey look, you did your best and you are the best,” and I will take immense pride in my husband who will be a man of strong character if he can bring so much pride to my country. Thank you very much.’

Clearly, Sabira Merchant’s training combined with Guha and Saran’s efforts to instil confidence in Priyanka had come handy. The audience clapped and even Malaika Arora remarked with a ‘wow!’

Excerpted from PRIYANKA CHOPRA, The Incredible Story of a Global Bollywood Star by Aseem Chhabra with permission of Rupa Publications India. The book releases next week.

Aseem Chhabra's delightful biography of Indian cinema's handsomest actor throws light on his happy-go-lucky streak. He chose films with charming recklessness.
MUMBAI MIRROR (May 8, 2016)

"My father-in-law used to call Shashi Uncle "taxi" back then,' Neetu Singh Kapoor says. 'Ki kisi ko bhi apni gaadi main bitha leta hai!' ('He'd seat anyone and everyone in his car.')

Neetu speaks figuratively, of course. Raj Kapoor used the word 'taxi' to describe his brother when he was desperately trying to get dates from Shashi Kapoor for Satyam Shivam Sundaram — a film that ostensibly explores the distinction between physical and spiritual love, but, in fact, represents Raj's love for the singer, Lata Mangeshkar. While actors were queuing up to play the lead role in the film, Raj strongly felt only Shashi could play his younger self in this somewhat autobiographical tale. So he looked at his brother's schedule and coolly appropriated all the dates he had given other filmmakers. 'He also insisted that on the days I was to shoot with him, I wouldn't shoot with anyone else,' Shashi tells film critic, Deepa Gahlot. 'To accommodate Rajji, I had to work round the clock, doing four to five shifts a day, sleeping in a car.' His frenetic lifestyle, which made a car his semi-permanent address, led to the nickname, 'taxi'.

But 'taxi' came to become Shashi's moniker for other reasons too. Author Bunny Reuben suggests that both Shashi and Zeenat Aman (Shashi's co-star in Satyam Shivam Sundaram) were subject to Raj's tongue-lashing when he learnt of their shooting calendars. 'You people aren't stars,' Raj scolded. 'You are all taxis. Someone puts your meter down —you go there! Then someone else puts your meter down — and you go there. Two hours here...two hours elsewhere. Taxis! That's what you artists have become.'

The pain of his older brother and father-figure publicly admonishing him stayed with Shashi for many years. 'That hurt him,' Madhu Jain says. 'He was very sensitive, he would never forget anybody who said anything about him, especially if it was Raj Kapoor.'

All the same, there was little Shashi could do to change his film schedule. The late 1970s — the decade that would define Shashi's career in India — would see the actor taking on a mindboggling number of projects, hopping from studio to studio and playing a range of characters. In fact, Samir Ganguli, who directed the star in Sharmeelee, says that the shift system in Hindi cinema started because of Shashi. '[He] was one of the busiest actors in those days,' he contends.

Despite an overfull diary, Shashi never let his directors down. Samir states, '[He was] absolutely punctual. At times, because of his hectic schedules, he would get delayed, but none of us would really mind because we knew that once he arrived on the sets, he would never hesitate to deliver what was required of him.'

But Shashi's chock-full roster came with a definite drawback — one that Neetu, who acted in ten films with the star, got to witness first-hand. 'I was very young and I joined the industry at a phase when we did really bad movies together,' she says. 'We would do three shifts. I didn't know main kiska character kar rahi hoon, kya kar rahi hoon. (I didn't know what character I was playing, what I was doing.) Shashi Uncle also would come to the sets and ask, "Haan kya linein hai?" ("So what are the lines?")'

A harried Shashi, who could barely keep pace with his film commitments, found it near-impossible to stay abreast of plots or characters. Sanjna Kapoor remembers learning of this during long family drives from South Bombay to Juhu to visit Prithviraj Kapoor. 'When Papaji was alive — and every Sunday we'd go to see him, if my dad was in town — I would ask my father to narrate the story of a film he was acting in. And he would make it up. He had no idea. He had absolutely no clue!'

If the 1970s saw Shashi at his busiest, the decade also saw him acting in films that were exceptionally violent and regressive. Chor Machaye Shor — one of the few films Shashi acted in with Mumtaz — is packed with truly offensive situations. In fact, as critic Todd Stadtman points out, it has 'something of an obsession with rape'. Vijay (Shashi) is thrown into jail on a trumpedup charge of raping his girlfriend, Rekha (Mumtaz). When he escapes prison, he decides that since he has been falsely implicated, he may as well prove his accusers right — leading to a horrifying scene where Vijay declares his intention to rape his girlfriend. Soon after, Rekha, attempting to shame Vijay, bares her breasts to him, and Vijay, 'proving himself to a good Indian boy, immediately covers his eyes and insists she cover up' — making this, at once, a wholly unintelligible and terribly disquieting film. While there are a few bearable moments, entirely on account of the songs — 'Ghungroo Ki Tarah' and 'Ek Daal Par Tota Bole', among others — the shock ending, where our 'hero' wins his girlfriend's fidelity after attempting revengerape, erodes whatever little the music could salvage.

Sanjna, on catching her father in these films, says, 'I remember asking my mother, "How could he work in such crap?" Really, I am not a great feminist, but there is a whole period of Hindi cinema which upsets me so much — not only the violence, but also the way women are treated.' Then, Jennifer Kendal Kapoor explained to Sanjna that her father would have continued being a stage actor if it were financially viable. 'But he had a family and the family expanded. With that, the lifestyle changed and got cushier. If you decide to go to London every summer, and maintain a house in Goa, you have to earn a certain amount of money. You are sucked into this cycle and you can't get out.'

Anil Dharker goes on to say, 'I think Shashi took everything in his stride. He accepted it right from the beginning — this is what commercial cinema used to be and when you said "yes" to a role, you did what was asked.'

This excerpt from Shashi Kapoor The Householder, the Star by Aseem Chhabra has been reprinted by permission of Rupa Publications India.

MID-DAY (May 3, 2016)

Chapters from the personal and professional life of the enigmatic Shashi Kapoor that hitherto remained disclosed is set to come to the fore as a biography on the versatile actor is set for a release this Friday.

Shashi Kapoor: the Householder, the Star, authored by film journalist Aseem Chhabra, attempts to delve into the nature and nurture of Kapoor, who proved his might as more than a natural star born into the first family of Hindi film industry as he became the commercially viable superstar and a critically acclaimed actor.

The Rupa Publications, offers glimpses of Kapoor, the family man — son of Prithviraj Kapoor, husband of Jennifer Kendal, and father to Kunal, Karan and Sanjna, while it tracks the emergence of a bright-eyed boy who made his acting debut in brother Raj Kapoor’s directorial maiden Awaara (1951) to one of the busiest performers in the 1970s.

Kapoor, who was in 2014 felicitated with the Dadasaheb Phalke Award, the highest honour in Indian Cinema, belted out films like Waqt, Deewar, Trishul even as his foray into the non-commercial arena of filmmaking yielded nothing less than Junoon, Kalyug and Utsav, all considered masterpieces.

Set for its official launch on May 6, the biography also traces the affable Bollywood star’s foray into world cinema as also his pioneering works in the theatre circuit.

Stakeholder to three National Film Awards, Kapoor outshone some of his contemporaries, including megastar Amitabh Bachchan and flamboyant Shatrughan Sinha, with his foreign ventures including the most famous The Householder besides Shakespeare Wallah, Heat and Dust, Bombay Talkie, among other British and American productions.

Priyanka Chopra on her journey from Mumbai to Montreal
DNA (April 2, 2016)


‘There is no strategy’
Her résumé mirrors a steady build-up to a crescendo—with the occasional wrong note, of course. “There is no strategy,” insists the 33-year-old, who carved out the time for an early-morning phone call from Montreal, Canada, where she was logging superhuman hours shooting for Quantico. Chopra plays Alex Parrish, a fearless Indian-American FBI recruit framed for executing the deadliest attack on New York City since 9/11. It’s easy to see how that twisty role, the first part Chopra ever had to formally audition for, served as the unofficial try-out to the aforementioned Baywatch remake, where she’ll play a baddie, single-handedly taking on an elite crew of lifeguards, starring heavy-hitters like Dwayne Johnson aka The Rock and Zac Efron. “Let me show you how slow-motion running is done, Hollywood!” she quips with a throaty giggle.

All things India
“I’m an education portal for those who don’t know what India is,” Chopra admits, only half-joking. “I help people understand our movies — no, we don’t just randomly break into song and dance, that’s an important part of our storytelling.”

Being PC
Thankfully, there’s a palpable sense of camaraderie that streams through Quantico’s multicultural ensemble, evident in the nicknames they’ve assigned each other—Chopra’s is “Priyonccupied” for her incessant multitasking. “Out of any of us, (Chopra’s) the most displaced, the furthest away from home,” says Johanna Braddy, her roommate on the show. “But she’s so endearing. She helps people even when she doesn’t have to, whether it’s offering rides to airports or giving advice on how to be a strong woman.”

Quantico tales
“ABC pushed a totally unknown face to mainstream America,” says Aseem Chhabra, a New York City-based film critic and programmer for the New York Indian Film Festival. He is alluding to the publicity blitzkrieg the network launched last fall.

Chopra’s face was splattered on buses and billboards across major American cities, ensuring no one’s morning commute was devoid of a PC sighting. “It’s pretty remarkable for them to show so much faith in her and invest in her that way,” Chhabra adds.

“I was concerned about (Quantico) because there hasn’t been a precedent for this — I’d never seen Indian actors in the West leading television shows,” explains Chopra. Quantico isn’t ABC’s only current programme that showcases a minority lead. The network is responsible for a cavalcade of recent shows — Scandal, How To Get Away With Murder, and Fresh Off The Boat, to name a few — that reflect the demographic changes sweeping America. It’s the sort of dynamic television that serves as the perfect antidote to the social media maelstrom surrounding this year’s Academy Awards, which were accused of being woefully tone-deaf in the race department. Chopra, in all her cosmopolitan glory, couldn’t have planned her US entrance at a more appropriate time.

Keep going
“For me, it’s about surpassing what I’ve done before — how do I become bigger and better?” she divulges as her voice trails, momentarily. “I just put my head down, keep working and make sure I’m the best person for the job.”