culture
Irrfan Khan’s Comfortable Silence
We spoke with the Bollywood star about his new true crime thriller, Talvar, the story's Toronto connection, and the power of the media.
Photo courtesy of Irrfan Khan.
Irrfan Khan is a man comfortable with silences. Dressed in a beige jacket with a dark-brown floral print, a black shirt, jeans, and a scarf loosely coiled around his neck, he’s lounging on a couch at the downtown Toronto venue chosen for media interviews for Talvar. Written by Vishal Bharadwaj and directed by Meghna Gulzar, the Bollywood film screened as part of the Toronto International Film Festival last month.
As Khan waits in between the media shuffle, occasionally glancing at his phone, he doesn’t feel the need to chat with the people scurrying around him. He’s not rude about it, just amusedly observant. Even when one of his handlers plonks himself next to Khan and mooches a hand-rolled Drum cigarette off of him, Khan barely says a few sentences, letting the handler prattle on instead.
“I meant to quit smoking, but then this role in a series came and I had to smoke for it,” Khan says at one point, his head bent as he rolled the cigarette, followed by a careful pause, before continuing the thought with a slow smile. “I guess I lost the battle.”
It’s sometimes discombobulating when you meet a famous actor, to find out that their onscreen personas carry vestiges of their real-life selves. In the case of Khan, famous for movies such as Life of Pi, The Amazing Spiderman, Slumdog Millionaire, and The Lunchbox, on top of the many, many Indian films he’s acted in, it’s those silences that carry over from real life to reel life. The thing with Khan is, though, that he speaks volumes in those silences.
In The Lunchbox, which screened as part of TIFF 2013, Khan plays a lonely widower who accidentally begins receiving someone else’s tiffin box –or lunchbox– from the dabbawalas that deliver lunches from restaurants or homes to people at work in Mumbai. His turn from surprise to understated delight to a quiet yearning is wonderfully done. In this summer’s Bollywood film Piku, he plays a taxi company owner, whose reactions at being caught between a crotchety father and his acerbic daughter during a road trip are a delight to watch. Khan is masterful in those small moments in between the dialogues.
The same is true for his latest film, Talvar, which opens across Toronto theatres this weekend. In it, he plays an investigative officer Ashwani Kumar. A member of an agency modelled on India’s Central Bureau of Investigation, Kumar is cynical of office politics, and can be found playing a snake game on his phone when his superiors are looking for him. Kumar is reluctant to take on the case of a double homicide of a teenager and the domestic help. But the police has bungled the initial investigation, and Kumar has to step in despite his reservations.
“You know when I was just starting to act, when I was at theatre school, I just couldn’t do it. I used to wait for inspiration for strike me. I used to walk up and down Purana Qila [in New Delhi], like this,” he says, waving his arms like windmills. “Then I had this one teacher. And he made us do this play. It was a Russian play. He told us to find the character in ourselves. That cracked it for me. Then I got it. I have never forgotten that lesson, or that teacher.”
Styled like a whodunnit, Talvar is based on the real life case of the murders of Aarushi Talwar, a New Delhi teenager, who was found murdered in her bedroom in 2008, and the domestic help Hemraj Banjade, whose body was found on the terrace the next day. Torontonians might be familiar with the case because the parents eventually accused of the murders are relatives of Toronto Star reporter Shree Paradkar. Paradkar has been writing about the innocence of her cousin, Nupur Talwar, and her husband, Rajesh, the way the case was mishandled by the police and the media circus that ensued for the Star.
The case has held India’s fascination for a long time. The police incompetence, along with the sensational media coverage, have added to the schadenfreude. The movie explores this expertly by showing different perspectives of the investigation. But it’s Khan who provides the central core of the film, keeping the audience engaged in the drama, even as his character seems aloof.
It had been hard to escape the details of the Talwar case from daily news coverage in 2008, says Khan, and he soon tuned out. He was thus surprised to find out that he wasn’t aware of many facts around the case. That’s what ultimately intrigued him about the film.
“The media in India is very powerful,” he says. “It can create a perception of democracy. The media is important, no doubt. It’s supposed to raise questions. But in this case, the media misused its power.
“While I was researching my role, I met people who were involved in the case. And they painted a very different picture. So that’s what I hope the audience does in this case–I hope they find their own truth.”
Talvar also explores the ways Indian society is grappling with social class and attitudes towards what’s considered traditional and modern. When Aarushi Talwar’s body was discovered, the suspicious immediately fell upon the domestic help. When Banjade’s body was discovered, the fingers quickly pointed toward the parents and their supposedly liberal lifestyle. Armchair experts speculated on whether the mother showed enough grief over the death of her daughter.
The media was just as guilty, playing judge and jury, says Khan.
“News is like entertainment,” he says, with a wry smile. “The amount of noise we have these days, it’s hard to catch your attention. So you make even more noise. The media goes for the ratings, and it makes things more sensational and eye-catching.”
In 2013, the Talwars were found guilty of the double homicide, and sentenced for life in jail. They have launched an appeal, but the backlog of cases in India means that it could be a decade before their appeal is dealt with. Meanwhile, the case has inspired several projects–episodes in an Indian TV series in 2008, a film called Rahasya that released earlier this year and a book by Indian journalist Avirook Sen, which depicted the entire affair as a terrible miscarriage of justice.
Although the filmmakers insist that Talvar is not taking any sides, the movie clearly sympathizes with the Talwars, portrayed by Neeraj Kabi and Konkona Sen Sharma, with depth as grief-stricken parents caught in a web.
It isn’t the role of a film to change the world, says Khan, but he hopes that Talvar will re-open a larger discussion about India’s justice system.
“It’s not just about Aarushi’s parents. There are many people languishing in jail,” he says. “Many of them have nobody to support them. No bail, nothing.
“One film cannot change the system, but maybe it can start a movement.”