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The Romantic Mr Khan

With The Lunch Box, old-world romance is in the air. And very much like his character in the movie, actor Irrfan Khan wants audiences to watch the film and fall in love.

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It’s difficult to miss the entourage that accompanies Irrfan Khan. It includes  team members from the production team of The Lunch Box (TLB); in there is also a make up man who waits by the aisle, ready with his tools just so the actor can quickly powder up before he faces the cameras. But once the noise settles and the questions begin, the actor is in his elements — relaxed enough to quip, ‘Have you watched Grand Masti?’ and ask us what we thought of his movie that’s been generating Oscar buzz already and will be released in India next Friday.

Cutting quite the dapper figure, you’d think Khan by now is adept at, and probably enjoys, giving interviews. “I am not a good talker and interviews are not something I relish but I make them as best as I can,” Khan drawls poker-faced.

Now while that may be true, fact is he is a sincere interviewee; someone who answers questions, no matter how repeated they get, unhurriedly and with poise, even lending the feeling that he’d much rather be here with you than elsewhere.
We’ll confess:  It is easy to lose track of time while conversing with Khan.

Just like you will lose track of place and time when you watch him as the brooding yet wry Mr Fernandes in The Lunch Box. “One of the reasons people are loving the movie is the fact that the romance in it is so overwhelming,” Khan avers before stating that what caught his attention about the movie’s script was its “simplicity, purity and its effectiveness in conveying the love story.” “The movie is not as much about saying the obvious things in as much as it is about the little details. We need to find stories that connect with audiences universally and The Lunch Box is doing just that,” Khan quietly says.

Directed by first-time director Ritesh Batra, Khan reveals that he was actually impressed by the director’s earlier works to consent to doing the film. “He’s a first time director, yes, but I had seen the short films he’d previously made and saw potential and possibility.”

A reply that prods us to wonder if he is still accessible to new directors and he replies in the affirmative. “I am always approachable to new directors.” But even as he admits in a moment of candour, “Sure there are times when you wonder if you can trust them to deliver,” he reassuredly adds, “but you get to know through your interactions about a director’s capability. And as an actor I have always worked with first time directors, be it Vishal Bharadwaj, Tigmanshu Dhulia or Asif Kapadia. It is not a new thing for me really.”

This talk of approachability spawns a question on the kind of roles coming in and if the actor is as greedy for roles today as he was when he started off. “I am more than thirsty!” he quips before letting in on that there’s no paucity in terms of offers coming in. “The work is getting bigger and bigger, which consequently means there’s a lot of filtration to be done before I accept the work I want to do.

And that is a tiring process.” His ‘filtration’ process, however, is nothing too complicated. “I ask directors to get in touch with me through email with the movie’s synopsis. If I am wowed by the synopsis, I ask them to send me the script before I say yes.”

Now, a conversation with Irrfan Khan would be incomplete without talking about Hollywood, wouldn’t it? As someone who’s seen the industry from close quarters and worked with some of the best talent there, we ask him what  Hollywood’s real perception of Bollywood is.

Here’s where you’d think Khan would clam up and throw a safe answer our way. Anything but.

“They have the picture that Bollywood is all about item numbers,” he states bluntly. “We are making respectable movies and the regional films being made today offer such rich fare, but over there, they think there’s nothing beyond Hindi films and dancing. And that is because those are the kind of movies we send to the Oscars,” he plainly states.

That is our cue to recollect a scene from The Lunch Box where the actor mouths a line about how ‘talent is not truly appreciated in the country’. Is that a view he agrees to? Khan smiles before saying, “That was improvisational banter but seriously, when there’s no value for life itself in the country, how do you expect talent to be considered? Talent here is just viewed as some extra appendage.”

As we draw the interview to a close we ask Khan about what he’d want the movie to accomplish and his simple quip is, “Get people to fall in love!” Follow that up quickly with what he is working on next, and he answers tongue-in-cheek, “Falling  in love!”

There, that explains the headline.

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