Gulshan Grover mourns Irrfan Khan’s loss with touching tribute

Gulshan Grover is one of Bollywood’s most critically recognized actors and in his long career within the film industry, he grew rather close to Irrfan Khan.

During an interview with the Times of India, he spoke at length about the demise of Irrfan Khan and Rishi Kapoor. He was quoted saying, “The news of both – Irrfan Khan and Rishi Kapoor’s demise has been shocking. Both of them were fantastic actors and great human beings. At such a time when people all over the world are so concerned and low, getting the news of first Irrfan and then Rishi’s demise has been very difficult and shocking to cope with. I knew both of them very well. I have been good friends with Irrfan and a younger friend to Rishi ji. It is like a personal loss for me.”

Gulshan admitted that he has had a rather close relationship with Irrfan Khan and has known him professionally for a large number of years. “I have known Irrfan for a long time. We have worked here in India and have been in constant interaction with each others on international front also where we were competing for the same roles. We have been friends, colleagues and competitors. I have always admired his work and it is been very inspirational. It is very unfortunate for the industry to have lost an actor like Irrfan who is very unique. He is somebody who took the level of acting many notches up. He has set a very high benchmark which is really hard to match.”

He also went on to say, “Not only professionally, but otherwise also Irrfan and I along with others used to hang out and have fun. Once when I was shooting in Lucknow with Tigmanshu Dhulia in Holi for ‘Bullet Raja’, Irrfan came in with his wife and spent time with us. He was not there in the movie but he was there on the sets enjoying with us.”

Taking a trip down memory lane, Gulshan revealed that he used to have “childish fights with him over his rowing fondness for Irrfan” and “we were like two siblings fighting.”

Before signing off, he stated, “I have known Irrfan from the time he worked on television in one of the horror series of Ramsay. But all this aside, you know, after a point there was only admiration for him. He used to leave his infectious smile with me after we finished chatting."