Sutapa Sikdar, wife of late actor Irrfan Khan shared on social media an emotional note she penned down celebrating the actor on the occasion of his first death anniversary. Her special note speaks of the Irrfan’s last night that he spent in the hospital and how she and her friend sang songs to cheer him up.
Actor Irrfan Khan who had been diagnosed with neuroendocrine cancer in 2018 lost his life in Mumbai’s Kokilaben Dhirubhai Ambani Hospital on April 29, 2020.
In the letter, she pens down the quote by the actor’s favourite poet Anais Nin that says – “People living deeply have no fear of death.” She continued by adding – “Last year tonight me and my friends sang songs for you, all your favorite songs.” She also reminds Irrfan in the note that how the nurses looked at them strangely while they sang for him because they were only accustomed to the religious chants people perform in critical times but since she had overdone that for his life every morning evening and night for two years. But now she wanted him to go with the memories that he loved. She continues- “ …and so we sang songs.” She gets us emotional when she reminds him how the next day he left everyone for the next station and in that moments she hoped he knew where to get down without her. “363 days eight thousand seven hundred and twelve hours..when each second is counted,” she wrote.
She then talked about the time he passed away, which was felt unimaginative. The mystery behind numbers also excited the actor. Sutapa questions in the note, that how can one swim this huge ocean of time. The clock had stopped at 11.11 on 29th April for her and she found it funny how he had three 11’s on his last day. She says that some find this ( 11/11/11 ) to be full of mystery and so does she. “How does one walk ahead the pandemic just adds to the anxiety, fear and pain,” Sutapa continued.
Sutapa wrote about how emotionally confused she felt about changing her name. Her days passed with countless responsibilities, some of which were extremely new ones like signature galore for changing of the name. She recalls how her fingers would stop on that thinking how could she just take his name away and make it Sutapa. “I was unable to sign, took a day off and the name game played on my mind. Like a film in a projector,” she quoted.
She also mentioned how they met for the first time. She recalled sitting outside NSD late evening where beautiful girls from Kathak Kendra were floating out, all dressed up. Whereas she always wore blue track pant and a sky blue t-shirt. She remembers the actor mispronouncing her name as she tried to correct him by rubbed it in his face and saying that as north Indians are so extremely stupid and are only capable of pronouncing names such as Sunny Vicky and Rahul and proceed to ‘kake ki dukaan in gol chakkar’ to have ‘ek bata do chai’.
Sutapa misses how it has been a long beautiful journey with Irrfan, a journey full of correcting each other, fighting, arguing laughing, and evolving together. She remembers how he always felt like a loner in a crowd and today a whole crowd has followed him up here. She jokes by reminding the actor “…by the way OM from the tea stall in the nukkad went on some years back,” Has he made a chai ka stall up there? Are you having ek bata do chai there? And are you drinking water from the running streams?” She implies that everyone loved all of him and tells the actor to always remember that all of him is missed by someone or the other.
She concludes by hoping that there is enough space and she hopes that some of the people will forgive them for not being able to give a respectable cremation to him.
