From going through grief to understanding the joy of living, filmmaker Anup Singh journeyed through time in the aftermath of the tragedy that struck him in the death of actor Irrfan Khan in April 2020. After weeks of misery, the elements of nature and the patterns they provided formed a perceptible ring around memories and impressions about a three-decade-long relationship as two professionals and friends. Irrfan Khan acted in two (Qissa: The Tale of a Lonely Ghost and The Song of Scorpions) of Singh’s three feature films and was slated to continue the ties in a third. Anup Singh talks with Faizal Khan about his book, Irrfan: Dialogues with the Wind, which he calls a tribute to the actor’s art and their friendship.

When did you start writing the book? How difficult was it to decide to pay a literary tribute to Irrfan Khan, who has had a huge influence on your filmmaking?

After his death, an oppressive stillness took possession of me. If I happened to stop somewhere—looking out a window or on the stairs to catch my breath or on the street to look at a tree—my wife had to come find me, because an hour or so had slipped away and I was still just standing there. These were weeks of wretchedness. It took me a while to understand that what would put me into such a trance was that the streets, the sky, the wind through the trees, were alive with rhythms and shapes and tones that evoked the familiar impressions of my friend I thought I had lost. And then it came to me that his taking shape in some form or another all around me was a gift.

Perhaps these visitations were to remind me of so much that was incomplete between us. Perhaps there was at least one venture that we had laughed over and enjoyed imagining and perhaps there was this one dream of ours among so many others that I could somehow complete. So, I sat down one morning and started writing the script for the film which was to be our next one together after The Song of Scorpions. While I worked on the script, with some calm now because it felt like Irrfan and I were collaborating again, I kept being struck by various memories of the joyous, sad, strange experiences we had together.

After a while, I started to jot down these memories in a separate notebook. These notes were just for myself, though sometimes I might share a particular anecdote on my social media pages. Amarjit Chandan, the great Punjabi poet, read some of these and called me. He urged me to remember more and keep writing until the fire and beauty that Irrfan brought to my life could be shared with others. I had to do it, he said to me. The scintillating sense of life that Irrfan had carried must be shared with everyone.

It was only then that I picked up that notebook of memories and started structuring it into a chapter and then another and then another until, finally, the book took shape. I read it through then for myself and I saw that it was a book full of grief. I did not think it was a fitting tribute for Irrfan because he was a man who in every moment of the day was full with the joy of living.

I sat down again and rewrote much of the memories so that they would now hold not only my grief within them but they had also to carry the triumphant, unshakeable affirmations of life that Irrfan shared with us as a person and as a performer. That’s how finally the book took shape.

When did you first meet him? Do you remember the occasion?

We first met in the mid-1990s. We were shooting an hour-long episode for television. While preparing for one of the shots, I was working out a movement in front of the camera for the actors. I was humming a melody under my breath to help me choreograph the movement according to a certain rhythm. I did not realise that Irrfan was standing beside the camera watching and listening to me. Suddenly, he started singing the melody that I was humming. Still singing, he took his position before the camera and worked through the movement. After we had taken the shot, he looked at me, grinning, “I want you to give me a melody for every shot after this. It changes how I move!” That was our first real meeting as actor and director. That’s the moment we began to understand and trust each other.

What was your relationship with him between films?

There could be a phone call or a text message at any time. There might be a poem that he had read and wanted to discuss it with me immediately. There was a piece of music that I might have played for him months ago, but he felt this was the right moment for him to listen to it again and he wanted me to send it to him. If he happened to be in Europe for a shoot, we made plans to meet. And, of course, whenever I could, I would fly down to Mumbai to spend time with him. He carried a great curiosity. He was interested in everything. He could pick up a pebble and talk about the colour given to it by the minerals it held, the shape it had taken because of water and wind, the other hands over hundreds of years that might have held it.

Certain concepts of new physics intrigued him immensely as did some people, like Gandhi, Simone de Beauvoir, Toshiro Mifune, Dilip Kumar. He loved to talk about younger actors that he felt were fighting against performances that were demeaning to them. As you might imagine, being with him was like being with a bee, always in flight, experiencing, reflecting on all kinds of colourful topics. And, then, there were times he could be as silent and in repose like a cat. A tremendous calmness but still always attentive. These moments of silence, just sitting quietly together, are the moments I miss the most.

You write that Irrfan Khan was excited when you told him at his hospital bed about the role he would be playing in your next film. What was the role? What is the stage of development of the film and is there any actor you can think of for a role Irrfan Khan was going to play?

That is a moment that I am never bound to forget. The moment that I told Irrfan about the role he would be playing in my next film. I told him that the role was about a folk-dancer. Irrfan looked at me in dismay. But, before he could say anything, I continued. This folk-dancer dresses like a woman, like Krishna’s Radha, when he dances. Irrfan stared at me like I had gone crazy. Then he started laughing.

He laughed so much that he had tears streaming down his cheeks. If there was one thing that Irrfan had a horror about, it was dancing. And here I was saying that the role he had to play was that of a folk dancer! Finally, wiping the tears from his face, he said to me, “You always bring me roles that I know I should not do. But I also know that I have to do this role! A dancer and a woman! How can I say ‘No?’ I have to do it!” I completed the script after Irrfan’s death and have put it aside. Before the end, Irrfan did, in his usual concerned and generous way, mention three actors he thought could do the role, but I am not ready to do the film as yet. Maybe, one day…

I remember meeting you and Irrfan Khan after the premiere of Qissa at the Toronto film festival. Both of you were reminiscing about how you were relentless in persuading Irrfan Khan to play the lead role he had repeatedly refused. Is there a story of a ghazal you wrote to Irrfan Khan that finally clinched it for you?

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 not presented 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 when he sings. His face contorts and sometimes it looks immensely 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!

In the book there is a reference to a question Irrfan Khan asks you, why is the male always the tormentor, a victim and sad figure in the scripts you write for him. It seems you never really gave him an answer. Or did you?

Yes, indeed, that was a critical moment for us. And I did give him an honest answer. However, this moment is crucial to the narrative of the book and I would rather that the reader come to it in the book.

However, I can say that, to me, his questions often tore open the earth under my feet. I would start sinking. To him, the struggle to find an answer in our work was a life-and-death struggle. Anything less than that was a waste of our time on this earth.

One might never find the answer, but the struggle, the seeking should never end. This is really one of the main reasons that I wanted to keep working with him. No one challenged me more than he did and no one brought me more joy when working together to find an answer.

Faizal Khan is a freelancer