7 Years of Piku: Amitabh Bachchan describes Irrfan Khan’s performance in this scene in the Deepika Padukone co-starrer as “BRILLIANCE beyond words”

The talented and acclaimed actor Irrfan Khan passed away two years ago, on April 29, 2020. His loss saddened moviegoers across the world. He was a rare actor who was loved unanimously thanks to his talent, memorable performances and his ability to stand out in diverse roles. As a result, the whole world felt a void in their lives when he left for a heavenly abode.

Earlier this year, a book on Irrfan Khan called 'Irrfan: Dialogues With The Wind' was released. It is written by Anup Singh, who directed Irrfan in Qissa (2015) and The Song Of The Scorpions (2017). The book consists of the director’s experience with the actor while working on these two films. Interestingly, mega star Amitabh Bachchan has written the foreword and in the book and it’s worth a read.

The foreword starts with some memorable lines, “Irrfan Khan. The intensity. The responsibility of the intensity. The silent righteousness of the responsibility. The eloquent eyes of his silent righteousness. If I were to present an actor whose mere appearance could speak its mind with sophisticated elegance, I’d instantly point to Irrfan Khan.”

Amitabh Bachchan then further said that Irrfan Khan didn’t need to script or dialogues to elevate a sequence and that his mere presence would do the trick. Big B listed a few of his performances which stood out according to him like Slumdog Millionaire (2009), The Lunchbox (2013), Hindi Medium (2017), Maqbool (2004), Paan Singh Tomar (2012) and Piku (2015).

Amitabh Bachchan had worked with Irrfan Khan in Piku, which completed 7 years on May 8, and the former then spoke about a scene in this film to tell viewers how Irrfan Khan was class apart. Amitabh Bachchan narrated that in a sequence, Irrfan Khan’s character Rana Chaudhary arrives at the house of Piku (Deepika Padukone) and Bhaskor Banerjee (Amitabh Bachchan) to take them to Kolkata from Delhi in his car. Rana is the owner of a car rental service and he is compelled to volunteer for the job after his drivers refuse to accompany the Banerjees on the long road trip.

Everybody gets seated in the car. Rana realizes that Bhaskor’s house help is seated in the front while Piku and Bhaskor are seated at the back. Rana gives a certain look to the house help and then to the daughter and father. Immediately, Piku asks the house help to switch places. It was a funny scene and raised laughs in cinemas.

Amitabh Bachchan said that instead of saying dialogue like “Excuse me; I am the owner of this company, not your employed driver. I am doing you a favour by volunteering to drive you. Respectfully, shouldn’t one of you be in the seat next to me rather than the house help?”, Irrfan simply gave a look and thus “conveyed an entire paragraph of dialogues” “in those magical few seconds”. He also stated that it was “brilliance beyond words”.

Towards the end, Amitabh expressed sorrow over Irrfan’s untimely demise. He wrote, “Irrfan was taken away from us too soon. A promising life was snapped by death before its time. He had been giving to life far more than what he was getting back in return. And he had so much more in reserve. Yet, death decided otherwise.”

Also Read: Irrfan Khan was to supposed play Krishna’s Radha and Duryodhana in Qissa director Anup Singh’s next