Monkey Bizness: When Iresh Zaker Becomes the Brother Under Suspicion

In Rafi’s house, everyone is keeping something to themselves. There’s a father with a secret, a mother with a grudge, a brother with a problem at work, and a sister-in-law counting the days until she can leave. Monkey Bizness follows one household under one roof, where everyone is too busy with their own troubles to notice anyone else’s, until something happens that none of them can ignore.

The telefilm was the directorial debut of Rahat Rahman, and its cast brought seasoned actors like Tariq Anam Khan together with a younger generation of performers. Iresh Zaker plays Nafi, the family’s elder son, whose ordinary office job suddenly stops feeling ordinary.

At-a-Glance

• Title: Monkey Bizness
• Type: Telefilm
• Release Year: 2015
• Genre: Family drama
• Director: Rahat Rahman
• Channel: NTV
• Presented by: Airtel (now Cirkle)
• Cast: Tariq Anam Khan, Iresh Zaker, Sabila Nur, Faria Sabnam, Tamim Mridha
• Iresh Zaker’s Role: Nafi, Rafi’s elder brother

The Story

Rafi (Tamim Mridha) is a private university student trying to build a life of his own, which isn’t easy when home feels like a battleground.

His father is quietly involved with another woman. His mother can’t make peace with her daughter-in-law. His elder brother, Nafi, is caught in a crisis at work he never saw coming. And his sister-in-law, tired of the constant friction, dreams of a small home of her own, away from the rest of the family.

Everyone is caught up in their own grievances, and no one is really looking at anyone else. Then something happens that none of them expected, and the family has to face the question it has been avoiding: are they still a family at all?

Iresh Zaker as Nafi

The Character

Nafi has a stable job and a predictable routine, until money is stolen from the company where he works. Management launches an investigation to find the culprit. Nafi has nothing to do with the theft, but that doesn’t stop the fear from creeping in. When everyone in the office is a suspect, being innocent doesn’t feel like much protection.

Rather than wait to find out where the investigation leads, Nafi decides to get out first. He turns to an old university senior who now holds a senior position at Umbrella Corporation, hoping that an old connection can quietly open a new door. Whether that door opens, and what happens at his old office in the meantime, is where Nafi’s story really begins.

Bringing Him to Life

Nafi’s story doesn’t play out in shouting matches at the dinner table. While the rest of his family’s conflicts spill into the open, his stays mostly at the office door. He carries the worry alone, tries to keep it away from home, and goes on with his days as if nothing is wrong.

That makes it a quieter kind of role. It asks Iresh to play a man who is frightened but not guilty, and anxious but determined not to let it show. In a telefilm full of loud personalities, Nafi gives the story one of its most relatable threads: the fear of falling under suspicion for something you didn’t do.

The Music: “Jajabor Pakhna”

Some telefilms are remembered for a scene. Monkey Bizness is also remembered for a song.

“Jajabor Pakhna,” composed by Arafat Mohsin and produced by Studio 58, caught on with viewers after the telefilm aired and became a hit in its own right. Its popularity led to an acoustic version sung by the telefilm’s lead actress, Sabila Nur. She had been acting and modeling for five years, but this was her first time singing on a track. She had originally been meant to sing on the song, and the acoustic version finally gave her that chance.

How Audiences Responded

Monkey Bizness was the tenth telefilm in Airtel’s telefilm series. It premiered at Star Cineplex in Dhaka and made its television debut on NTV. It found its strongest audience among young viewers and generated enough buzz after its first broadcast that NTV aired it again by popular demand.

What the Story Is Really About

Underneath the arguments and the chaos of a household in disarray, Monkey Bizness is about something quieter: how easy it is to live beside the people you love without really seeing them.

Each member of Rafi’s family is dealing with something ordinary. There’s a betrayal kept hidden, a grudge that never gets resolved, an innocent man worried about blame, and a wish to escape. None of it is dramatic on its own. Together, it’s enough to slowly pull a family apart. The telefilm asks what it would actually take for a family like this to notice each other again, and whether that is still possible.

Why It Still Resonates

The chaos in Monkey Bizness isn’t exaggerated for effect. It’s recognisable. The tension over a daughter-in-law, a son worried about his job, a younger brother trying to find his own path: these are situations many Bangladeshi families have lived through at some point.

Nafi also shows a different side of Iresh as an actor. The same year, audiences saw him as Danny, the antagonist of Chuye Dile Mon, a role that won him the National Film Award for Best Performance in a Negative Role. Nafi is almost the opposite: not a man who causes trouble, but one caught in the shadow of trouble he didn’t cause.