irrfan khan

The test of a good actor is how he performs a well written role. The test of a great actor is how he fares in a pathetically written one.
Even the latter category performances by Irrfan Khan put most of our 100-crore-club heroes to shame. As for the former category performances, no eulogy can suffice.
When I shut the lids on my moist eyes, a montage seems to play out. I see him smoking in his balcony in Lunchbox; I see him occupied with the biryani in Maqbool; I see him comically refuse the annual-day speech in English Medium. Then, I see him mildly shake his head as he bids goodbye to Tabu from his airport queue in Namesake.
In the movie too, he is never to return.
When asked what would leave the world poorer, the absence of Alexander Graham Bell or that of Beethoven, Richard Feynman had voted for the latter. Someone would’ve sooner or later come up with the telephone invention, he’d explained, but no one except Beethoven could’ve composed the Fifth Symphony in C minor.
No one, absolutely no one, will ever pull off the nuances that Irrfan owned.