Naseeruddin Shah says Irrfan Khan knew about his death ‘for about two years’: ‘To be able to see this grim reaper…’

Veteran actor Naseeruddin Shah has recalled his conversation with late Irrfan Khan,  before the actor’s death in April 2020. In a new interview, Naseeruddin said that Irrfan ‘knew for about two years that it was going to happen’.

Naseeruddin Shah and Irrfan Khan has worked together in several films including Maqbool (2003) and 7 Khoon Maaf (2011). Irrfan died last year, at the age of 53, after a long battle with cancer.

In an interview with Indian Express, Naseeruddin Shah spoke on Irrfan Khan’s death. “That was a unique thing because Irrfan knew for about two years that it was going to happen. I spoke to him several times over the phone even when he was in the hospital in London. It was amazing and it was a real lesson how he dealt with it. He would say: ‘I am observing death approaching me and how many people get that opportunity? To be able to see this grim reaper coming towards you and you are almost welcoming him’. Of course, it was a terrible loss. But it was not in our hands. It was just your bodily machinery shutting down. You don’t have any control over it.”

He added, “I don’t think it is healthy to obsess about death. I definitely don’t do that. I have experienced several deaths of my close ones — my family, my parents. Also, some dear friends, particularly the unexpected ones — the way Om [Puri] died, the way Farooq [Shaikh] died — were terrible shocks. But it does no good to obsess over it. I think that death is the most unimportant part of life and ironically also the most unavoidable one as well. I don’t dwell on it at all. I will go when I have to go. As long as I am around I want to be as alert and as alive as possible. I would not like my friends to be lamenting about me when I am gone but celebrating and laughing and talking about the things I did. I would rather they remember me for the life I have lived than talk about how I died.”

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Recently, Irrfan Khan’s wife Sutapa Sikdar spoke about his hard work, in an episode of the docu-series Tarader Shesh Tarpan. She had said, “People always used to say Irrfan never really acted, I’ve heard this innumerable times from innumerable people. I always wondered if so much hard work goes into ‘not acting’, how much effort would be going into ‘acting’. I have never seen a man in my entire life working so hard, even my son, who is getting ready to walk on his father’s path, asks me what he used to do, and I always tell him that your father used to work 10 times harder than you do.”