Conversations with Irrfan Khan are the best. In the decade-plus years that I have been interviewing the 49-year-old powerhouse performer, very rarely have we stuck to the script. Recently, when I met him during the promotions of Madaari, in a tiny office cubicle in Mumbai’s Andheri West, it was no different.

I spot the beginning of a man bun and so I ask: “You are growing your hair?!” From there we ended up talking about Gandhi, being a parent, his obsession with water and the one character he couldn’t wait to get rid of.

So the long hair…

Ya, it’s for a film. Also, I get bored with how I look. When I had dreamt of becoming an actor, I thought that every time people would see me I would have a different look. So, I’ll get to experience different lives. That was, of course, a very naive idea. But it is fun to keep experimenting.

When I was young, we weren’t allowed to have long hair. So, all three of us brothers (Imran Khan and Salman Khan) had exactly the same haircut. We also had the same kind of clothes… same colour and fabric! (Laughs)

That’s a very typical childhood story, hai na?

Ya. All mothers had one shop that they would shop at and they would find one bundle that they liked and they would get different lengths cut for everyone’s clothes!

At least you didn’t have curtains of the same material!

(Laughs) But there were some shirts that were perfect for curtains! Anyway, now that I have the freedom to experiment, I don’t hold back. I even tell my kids (Ayaan and Babil) to grow their hair. I always tell Ayaan to grow his hair because I think he’ll look nice with long hair, but he refuses to listen to me! He has a round face so I keep telling him that long hair would suit him, but he has an aversion to long hair. I wish I was told as a kid that I could keep my hair long.

Talking about Ayaan, you spent Father’s Day with him last month at Sabarmati Ashram!

Ya, I don’t connect to the concept of Father’s Day or Mother’s Day. In our society, every day is Father’s Day or Mother’s Day. I don’t even celebrate my birthday (January 7) because I think every day is my birthday.

As Gandhi is becoming more and more relevant every day, I thought it’s important to know what his dreams and fears were. He kept warning us that freedom is meaningless unless inside you know who you are. There is no point of being free if you forget your roots.... I think he is the biggest hero of the 20th century.

I was shooting for Jurassic World  (2015) in Hawaii, which is on the other side of the world, and I saw a statue of Gandhiji in the middle of a park. I was so surprised and happy. I was shooting Inferno in Budapest and I met a professor who had tears in her eyes when she said, ‘Hungarians love India because of Mahatma Gandhi’. His voice resonated in the world. His lessons weren’t just limited to India, but were  for the human race. His teachings aren’t complicated on the surface and he was also getting inspired by his contemporaries like (Leo) Tolstoy and (Henry David) Thoreau.

When I was growing up, we thought Gandhiji was a boring character. That was until I watched Mr (Richard) Attenborough’s Gandhi (1982). That film overwhelmed me. It was really nice to spend the day in Sabarmati and to talk to Ayaan about Gandhi and his importance.

And your son Babil accompanied you to Singapore during the Inferno promotions and got to meet Tom Hanks!

He just came along. He has just finished his Class XII. He doesn’t want to go into college this year, so he’s decided to have a gap year. He didn’t have any plans, so I took him along. He had met Tom while we were shooting in Budapest. It was great for him to interact with the likes of Tom and Ron (Howard, the director of Inferno) and listen to the greats of our times. He would accompany me for dinner every night.

How do you rate yourself as a father?

I am struggling to be a good father. It’s a big challenge. Being a father completely changes you. Before your child is born, you never imagine yourself as a giving person. Then, you let go of your own dreams and start dreaming for your kids. The biggest challenge of a parent is to understand that each child is a unique human being who should not be moulded according to what the parent wants.

That’s exactly what Kahlil Gibran talks about in his poem Children...

Yes. Parents need to forget their possessiveness and allow their children to grow up into unique individuals. I remember when Babil was three years old, I took him to the swimming pool and I tried showing him how to swim. He refused to see how I was swimming and instead jumped into the pool and figured it out himself. Today, he is a better swimmer than me.

I have always been fascinated by water, but I couldn’t learn swimming until the age of 13-14. I used to have dreams of water. He has managed to explore water in a way that I didn’t. That’s the challenge you have as a parent — you have to let your child explore. I try to be friendly with my sons, but I don’t make decisions for them. I haven’t chosen a career for them. I don’t want them to become complacent because they have more facilities than I did when I was growing up. I want them to respect and value what they have.

One of my friends, Afroz Shah, is cleaning Versova beach every weekend. I told Babil to check out what Afroz is doing and to help out if it engages him. He loves it and now he and his girlfriend help out on weekends. This is how I try to engage my sons and point them in the right direction.

In Madaari, you play a father. Was that something that drew you to the film?

Not really. It’s only one aspect of the film. What I found interesting was this film has a layer beyond being just a thriller. It’s also a reflection of the society we live in.

Through your career, you have been a chameleon of sorts, never sticking to an image. Has the audience ever seen the real Irrfan on screen?

I don’t know. I have never thought of this. Very often, you do dig within yourself to find a character. There are times when your concerns are also a character’s concerns and that’s how you identify with a character. There are also characters that you enjoy so much that you don’t want to lose them and they become a part of you. Like Paan Singh (Tomar) was such a character. There was a lot of reflection of my father in him.

There are some characters that are so complicated that you don’t want to revisit them ever again. Like in In Treatment (his HBO TV series), I played a very complicated character. He (Sunil) was really dependent on his wife. She used to run his life and when she dies, he doesn’t know how to live. Their son, who lives in America, take him to live with him and his American wife. So now my character is rudderless in a strange country. I had not faced such helplessness and dependence in my life. I didn’t want to live in that headspace, but I had no choice.

Shooting that show for two-and-a-half months was torture. When the last shot was done, I screamed my lungs out. Everyone on the set was shocked! (Laughs) I had to explain to them that I had been waiting for that moment for so long.