Bollywood superstar Shah Rukh Khan is a woman trapped in a man’s body. Or so he claims.
“I am a little bit effeminate. Look, I even sit like a girl,” said Khan at a press conference in Mumbai on Thursday, which tabloid! attended.
He sat with his knees touching and ankles crossed. For a fleeting second, we thought we were onto something there.
But barring his lady-like posture, there was nothing unmanly about King Khan, as he is popularly known, who was on a publicity over-drive to promote his August 8 Eid release ‘Chennai Express’.
Sporting a fierce stubble, a cigarette dangling from the side of his mouth and his right arm in a black sling, the 47-year-old idol looked all mean and macho on the outside. But he’s convinced that his ability to be in touch with this feminine side is the secret behind his soaring popularity with women.
Often dubbed as the king of Bollywood romance, Khan is legendary for spinning fairy tales about soulmates and peddling happily-ever-after endings. It’s well documented that women across the globe throw themselves at him, write copious love letters in blood and his bodyguard is often propositioned with all sorts of unmentionable promises in order to gain access to this self-made star.
“Girls have the same innocence as kids. That’s why I have a lot of respect for women… Also I have been brought up by my aunts and mum. I lost my father early and therefore I am close to ladies. My feminine side is more developed and perhaps that’s why I don’t get to do as many macho roles,” said Khan.
His gripe about missing out on action-packed roles will soon be appeased, though. In director Rohit Shetty’s ‘Chennai Express’, produced by UTV Motion Pictures and Khan’s Red Chillies Entertainment, the actor plays a 40-year-old Rahul who discovers love and life as he sets out on a train heading to south India. Just like a vegetarian thali (platter), there’s tantalising bits of sweet and savoury on board. There are car explosions, colourful dancers, beautiful girls and a larger-than-life hero in this adventure.
It’s also a first of sorts for Khan: He is tackling a role closer to his real age. Bollywood, ruled by the bankable Khans like Aamir, Salman and Shah Rukh, is notorious for letting actors take on age-defying roles. At 44, Aamir Khan played a twenty-something college prankster in ‘3 Idiots’ and at age 47, a visibly-weary Shah Rukh played a guitar-strumming youngster in love with a young Katrina Kaif for a good part of ‘Jab Tak Hai Jaan’. Both films were blockbusters.
Ask him if it was a relief to play a 40-something instead of turning back the biological clock, he retorts: “When you see a film like Entrapment with Catherine Zeta Jones and Sean Connery, you don’t question it. Look at Michael Douglas in films or even heroes down south, you don’t question it. I don’t understand why I get asked this?”
Such observations also make him wonder why such sticky questions are not posed to his younger heroines who are happy to be wooed by him on the big screen. “Ask the younger girls not to work with me… I am a fantastic lover at 47 and not a virgin,” quipped Khan.
But under the veneer of bashful humour there lurks a good dose of reality-check.
“The other day, I was looking at a film called ‘Two States’ written by Chetan Bhagat. I thought I was too young for the film. I could have made the hero a person studying [in college] but I didn’t.”
With over 70 films under his belt and in a career spanning two decades, Khan, raised in Delhi and born to a north Indian father and a south Indian mother from Hyderabad is painfully aware that prancing around like a silly college boy won’t stick anymore.
“Strangely, when I was a doing ‘Om Shanti Om’ with Deepika Padukone six years ago, there was a love scene where I am walking down the road with her and she says she needs someone in her life who understands her, a person like me. I was supposed to react to her admission in a youthful manner. But I felt she was too young for me and I told Farah [Khan, the director] to not do it in a close up.
“I found it odd, even awkward, expressing those emotions in a youthful manner,” said Khan.
He didn’t face any such issues in ‘Chennai Express’, which he calls a situational comedy about a sweet seller from a protected family, who lives with his grandparents and who makes the grand step of rediscovering his life.
The late bloomer meets a Tamilan village beauty, Meena Rochi, the daughter of a village don, and finds himself in her native place (Chennai is the capital of the south Indian state of Tamil Nadu).
“I haven’t done a comedy film for a long time. As the years have gone by — except Mohanlal [Malayalam film superstar] — very few superstars have that choice that they can make fun of themselves and people still love them as a superstar. It has been a long time since a person has offered me a role like that. Earlier, I could do a film like ‘Duplicate’ — be goofy and funny. But now they are like, ‘He’s a star’. You have to keep that persona,” said Khan.
Films in Bollywood are not dictated by content alone. Often, stars with strong personalities take the film to the victory line. Their mannerisms, their style of dancing and dialogue delivery is regurgitated and preserved to ensure box-office success. Experimenting or tampering with that successful formula would mean taking risks.
But Khan is more than willing to tweak this.
“Success in my life is now a quantity because results in Bollywood are often measured by numbers. Numbers don’t excite me — whether I am number 1 or 7 in the top actor list or my films do Rs2 billion or Rs2.30 billion. It’s the process of work that excites me and not the results itself.”
Just as we thought his feminine side has reared its head, he does something goofy. In his trademark self-deprecating humour, he declares:
“I told Rohit, if this film does well. I will do ‘Ra.One 2’,” he said, referring to his sci-fi magnum-opus which was a box office disaster.
Shah Rukh Khan: Mr Congeniality
If Shah Rukh Khan were to compete in a beauty contest, he may not win the crown, but he will surely walk home with the Mr Congeniality title. Our interaction with Bollywood’s biggest star over two days spanning a press conference to unveil the trailer of ‘Chennai Express’ at Wadala Imax, a group round table interview and an exclusive chat later in the day, was dominated by fun, quirky moments. He could turn any sticky question on its head, give it a funny twist. He could whip out funny anecdotes with ease and has this rare ability to poke fun at himself.
