Irrfan Khan’s Bengali accent in The Namesake: The real story

When director Mira Nair chose Irrfan Khan in “The Namesake,” she remembers how much she valued his early lack of familiarity with the US. She introduced him to Jhumpa Lahiri’s parents to make sure his Bengali immigrant accent was genuine. Khan skillfully assumed the necessary accent while remaining at Times Square, juggling the roles of a librarian and a Bengali caterer, adding to the character’s believability.

In order to cast Irrfan Khan in a single scene for her 1988 film “Salaam Bombay!” award-winning director Mira Nair initially visited him in a basement at Delhi’s National School of Drama. She promised to return with a suitable character. Fifteen years later, the two reunited for Khan’s iconic portrayal of Ashoke Ganguli in “The Namesake” (2006), which was adapted from Jhumpa Lahiri’s book of the same name.

Nair considered it useful that Khan, who had made a name out of himself as an actor with roles in movies like “Maqbool” (2003) and “Haasil” (2003), had never visited the US prior to filming “The Namesake” in order to preserve the “newness of America” in his perception.

“It’s almost impossible to act like that, so I appreciated that he had never seen America. You can do it, I suppose, but only if you are truly feeling it. And he is quite valuable. During a session at the Samanvay festival on Saturday at the India Habitat Center, Nair stated, “He still holds that opinion of this madness.”

Khan and Tabu portrayed Ashoke and Ashima Ganguli, first-generation West Bengali immigrants to the United States, in “The Namesake.”

In order to have the actors learn the Bengali immigrant dialect, Nair had intended to keep Khan and Tabu in Lahiri’s parents’ house in New York.

“Khan didn’t reside with Jhumpa’s parents; instead, he stayed in a hotel near Times Square, which is a crazy area of America with neon, crazy people, streetside bars, and everything else. However, I was extremely aware that he was not Bengali, so I presented him to Jhumpa’s parents on the first day, first to meet them and then to demonstrate his accent,” the director recounted.

Nair intended Khan’s benchmark for his role’s accent in the movie to be Amar Lahiri, Jhumpa’s father, who was a librarian in the US.

“But then we had Bengali cuisine on ‘The Namesake’ sets. The caterer’s voice gradually started to sound more like Irrfan’s, making it more difficult for anyone, including Americans, to comprehend it. So we have to make the librarian more vocal and the caterer less so,” she said.

As the filming went on, Khan adopted the accent that Nair desired for the part.

“He wanted to accomplish all of it because he was so thirsty and open. But preferably for the first portion of the movie, we both tried to keep America’s novelty and strangeness fresh in his mind,” the “Monsoon Wedding” director stated.