Let Me Take You Far Away

Sipping tea at the boating club’s restaurant, Irrfan points to the rows of boats anchored below and says, ‘‘Whenever I feel lonely I hire one of those and sail across the lake. I spend hours among trees and birds.’’

A sports enthusiast, the boy from Jaipur once wanted to be a cricketer. But then the acting bug bit him, taking him to NSD and finally ‘‘I found myself in Mumbai.’’ In fact, his first few years in the city were spent near the Aarey Milk Colony. ‘‘I’d play cricket at the New Zealand Hostel’s playground. Later they stopped us, saying we were a nuisance,’’ he says. ‘‘I hate this unhealthy attitude towards sports.’’

A fan of NSD alumni like Naseeruddin Shah and Om Puri, Irrfan aspired to be ‘‘recognised like them’’. But somewhere along the way, he got slotted into negative roles. ‘‘I never wanted to do negative characters. But perhaps they found me more suited for serious roles than candy floss characters,’’ explains the actor who hit the popularity charts with television serials like Banegi Apni Baat and Chandrakanta.

Currently basking in the laurels The Warrior has brought, Irrfan is understandably ecstatic: ‘‘I never realised this film would bring me so much praise. I didn’t even know the director. It just happened so that the casting director suggested my name and I got this role.’’

The time comes for Irrfan to leave Aarey Milk Colony for ‘‘some urgent work in the city.’’ But he knows he can come back here for those moments of ‘‘seclusion when life’s pace becomes stifling’’.