‘ I was always a back- bencher’
Irrfan Khan reminisces about his schooldays while visiting a school in the city
The sight of actor Irrfan Khan interacting with children in a far- flung corner of the capital in its typically sweltering heat is a strangely heart- warming one. Bending down with his hand on a little girl’s head, he asks her “What’s your favourite sport?” The answer, cricket, makes him smile and probe her with a few more questions through the course of the afternoon, even as a bunch of other children huddle around him to probe him with questions of their own. The event, organised by P& G as part of their Shiksha initiative, has given him a chance to visit a school in Delhi and interact with its students and staff.
“This is taking me back to my own school days,” he says a little later as he settles down for a breather. “I thought I was dreaming as I rode into this place — the bare field, the locality, the people… the fact that they’re living in a place like this and sustaining a school for their children is really heartening. When I was in school, I would be traveling for hours to and from my classes and hated the fact that it left me with next to no time for playing!” he adds with a chuckle.
Reminiscing some more, he shares, “I was always a back- bencher in those days and had no idea what was happening in class most of the time. Looking back, I now realise that one’s education truly begins when what one is studying begins to interest one. Marks are a different matter altogether — they’re no measure of your intelligence or what you’re capable of achieving in life. The point is how much you evolve as an individual and that can only happen if you take interest in a subject. That was how it was, for example, with me and Maths, that universally despised subject. I used to hate it and then when I began to understand it and take interest in it, I began to love it!” Ask him how he took a leap from there to acting and he is quick to respond, “I was perfectly aware of the fact that if I continued into a purely academic discipline, I would have gotten thoroughly bored. That’s why I chose cinema and the National School of Drama took me forward from there.” At the moment, the actor is readying for his upcoming release Piku, wherein he dons the garb of a romantic lead – something he admits he has wanted to do for a long time. “Since the time I first wanted to become an actor, playing a romantic hero has been on my mind. That’s how you visualise yourself when you start out along that path, inevitably — love stories are an inseparable part of the Bollywood dream and so they were of mine too,” he affirms. Piku aside, he has also recently completed a set of workshops with the team of his upcoming Hollywood project Inferno based on the Dan Brown bestseller, led by director Ron Howard and actors Tom Hanks and Felicity Jones. “It was a wonderful experience. We did workshops, look tests, script readings, styling and more. I’m really looking forward to working with all of them now,” he concludes.
Irrfan Khan reminisces over his school days as he pays a visit to a school in the capital, passing on an important lesson that life has taught him: finding a subject that interests you is the true beginning of your education
Since the time I wanted to become an actor, playing a romantic hero has been on my mind. Love stories are an inseparable part of the Bollywood
dream