Shah Rukh Khan’s charm is his USP and the Badshah of Bollywood is well aware of it. A controversy that dogged him last month could have completely rattled anyone but not Khan — at least not in public.
He floored almost a dozen media persons from Muscat with his easy-going approach when we met him at the Taj Lands End Hotel in Mumbai, a stone’s throw away distance from his house Mannat, which was at that time crowded by hundreds of people and scores journalists.
An article – Being Khan – he wrote in Outlook Turning Points, a New York Times news services publication, had triggered a word of war between neighbours India and Pakistan.
He wrote: “I sometimes become the inadvertent object of political leaders who choose to make me a symbol of all that they think is wrong and unpatriotic about Muslims in India... I have been accused of bearing allegiance to our neighbouring nation rather than my own country...”
Reacting to the article, Lashkar-e-Taiba founder Hafiz Saeed asked him to go to Pakistan, while Pakistani interior minister Rehman Malik advised Indian government to provide security to Khan, who rejected the unsolicited advice from across the border.
Amidst such a controversy, he charmingly addressed media about his show – Temptation Reloaded 2013 – and then went for a launch of an international award function.
“Publicly, the controversies don’t bog me down, but privately, they are irritating to say the least and extremely hate-able to say the most,” Khan told tabloid!. “Publicly I keep a face where they don’t rattle me, but personally I get disturbed.”
“As an actor, the biggest boon and the biggest bane is that when you come out in front of public you have to act or just be happy,” he added.
“If I walk into a meeting where I am not smiling, there will be three other controversies. It is a negative take of being a successful actor that everybody wants you to be entertaining at any given time,” said Khan, the highest-earning Indian actor according to Forbes magazine.
Controversies have hounded his two-decades-long career, but given a choice Khan would want to relive the same life again. “I would give an arm and a leg to have it. I have got a lot more than I thought I would. I have beautiful children, lovely wife and fantastic set of work.”
“It is only rarely that you enjoy the work every morning,” he pointed out in support of his wish to relive the same life.
“I do this day in and day out. It doesn’t seem like work even now [doing an interview]. I don’t get bored. To be in a line of work which I have dedicated half of my life and enjoyed as much as I did the first day -- that is the greatest gift,” he added.
Asked if he had any plans to change the genre of films that he has been working since new types of films have been successful in recent times, he smiled and said that it had become fashionable to ask him if he would continue to do what he has been doing.
And then rather sarcastically Khan rattled out in one breath: “Just to refresh, my last film was Jab Tak Hai Jaan, which was kind of different from Ra.One, which was slightly different from Don 2, which was extremely different from Om Shanti Om, which was not even a patch on Chak De India or My Name is Khan.”
“So if you count the last six films that I have done they seem to be a little different to me, I feel sorry if people don’t think so.”
In reply to a question about increasing number of youngsters coming into the industry, he conceded that they were doing a fine job but advised youngsters not to play a “catching game” with him as they would end up being a copy of Khan.
“Having said that, it is also unfair for me to be sitting with a son who is 15 and daughter who is 12, for someone who has worked for 22 years in 72 films,” he added, with a chuckle.
“I don’t know if at that stage any of us really would sit down and say, I have to shift my gear to run further away from the youngsters who are catching up on me.”
Khan, who models Korean-made cars, used an automobile analogy to say that he was on a different page than the youngsters. “I believe I am sitting in a car of my own with its own gear and the car is on a completely different track from where these youngsters are wonderfully running on,” he said, adding that considering the work that he had done, it would be extremely small of him to be competing with newcomers.
“In five years, my son might be a star actor, it gives me odd thought when people say this but maybe I am in a position where everybody is competing with me,” he said.
Khan believes that what he does he does best and no youngster should try to catch up with him as they would be taking century-old Indian cinema forward with their talent, which he didn’t imagine he could do.
The film industry has given everything he has in life and he agrees but talk about cricket, in particular Indian Premier League (IPL) and his team Kolkata Knightriders, and Khan’s face lights up.
“We are the defending champions why should we?” in reply to a question on if he has any plans to hire coaches or new players like the Mumbai Indians have done recently.
“If the team excelled, why fix it?” he questioned.
He gave credit to unknown names hungry for success. “We have had big names and lost miserably. We had younger boys who nobody even knew of win matches for us.”
Getting philosophical, Khan said as a parting shot: “Now I would like to bring together like-minded people and create something new like the IPL team was, I want to promote things in my country which I can afford to right now.”
Shah Rukh Khan on love
Of his image of being a charmer and romantic, he said: “It is a misnomer. I am not romantic by nature. I am caring and sweet.”
On a serious note he said: “I personally feel that as a man if you can respect a woman or love her. Flowers, the moonlight dinners look good in films but it is the small things that you respect a woman, you care for her, treat her well. If you treat a woman as your equal in every aspect of life, I think that is the most romantic.”
“I think men tend to forget that because socially we have been brought up like that,” he added in a second breath.
“Biggest romance is thinking of the woman as your equal and I think that holds sway in any relationship,” he reiterated.
He added that as soon as man thinks he is a superior, the romance goes out the window.
