It has been a year since we lost the gem of an actor, Irrfan Khan and still many of us find it extremely difficult to even fathom that he is not around. When it is difficult for his fans to wrap their around his loss, it is only imaginable to be able feel what his family and close ones might have gone through.
His son, Babil Khan has been sharing instances and anecdotes from their lives as a form of reminiscing the legacy of his late father. Today marks the first death anniversary of Irrfan, who passed away due to a colon infection after suffering from neuroendocrine cancer.
He wrote, “Chemo burns you from the inside, so to find joy in the simple things, like building your own table to write your own journals. There is a purity, I have not yet discovered. There is a legacy that has already been concluded by my Baba himself. A full stop. Nobody can ever replace him. Nobody will ever be able to. To the greatest best friend, companion, brother, father, I ever had and ever will have. I love you so much, for the rest of this chaos we are choosing to call life. I miss you, more than all that shah-Jahan/mumtaz stuff; I would have built a space monument that could have taken us to the furthest parts of a blackhole singularity you were always intrigued by, but I would have been there with you Baba, and we could have gone together, hand in hand. (Exploring the last mysteries)”
In a recent interview, Babil had shared about struggling with suicidal thoughts after losing his father. Babil said that he fell apart two days after Irrfan’s death. He added that he went into ‘deep depression’ and lost the will to live, something that he still struggles with.
“For the first few days, mom was like how is it that he is taking it so well? I was running around, doing everything, making sure everything was fine at home and at the hospital. It was really bad, though. I can’t explain the amount of pain he was going through when he was conscious. I particularly remember when they were going to put a catheter, and asked me to leave the room, and he almost yelled, ‘Babil, tum kahin mat jao mujhe chhod ke!’ They pulled me out of the room and he screamed my name. I never felt that much pain and helplessness. I just stood there outside, hearing him scream my name,” he told a leading daily.