Art & Entertainment

The Khanate Without End

A journey extraordinaire. Twenty-five years on, Shahrukh Khan stays at the top effortlessly, retaining an insatiable hunger for excellence in his craft.

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The Khanate Without End
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Aag puurii kahaa. Na bujhii hai abhii
Diidaa-e-tar mein tishnagii hai abhii
(Who says the embers burn not/There’s thirst left
 yet in these moist eyes)

—Midahtul Akhtar

***

The best tributes to a superstar are perhaps those that were never heard much. Paradoxically for a kind of human figure that looms everywhere for millions of people—in remembered scenes, on billboards, in an abstracted sort of public consciousness—these may be spoken in intimate spaces, to friends or family, perhaps even to themselves. No one will know, for instance, what endearments to SRK may have been uttered by the wife and daughter of Farid Khan Sherani, the man who lost his life in the melee at Baroda railway station. He had taken his family, fans of Shahrukh Khan, to see the star as he passed by on August Kranti Express in a promotional rail yatra. Whatever they were, those words would have joined innumerable others, offered in joy and rapture, to an actor who’s now touching an incredible quarter-century at the top.

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An unusual tribute to Shahrukh was once offered by a middle-aged German lady outside a film festival in Europe. “We love him”, she said, because “we have had enough” of the standard male prototype—the tall, macho man, strong and silent, the medieval gallant. In Shahrukh, on the contrary, they saw a kind of neurosis and vulnerability. It is he who perhaps needs to be protected. Scan his films over the last 25 years, and it rings true. SRK’s is a persona composed of more complex notes than that of the average, monochrome Bollywood hero—quite outside the question of whether his filmography has entirely harnessed it. He has enough strings to his bow to attract an arthouse director, or a wide-eyed NRI kid…or a sedate European. In their time, Raj Kapoor and Amitabh Bachchan had that crossover appeal—but they got their Russia and Egypt, one suspects, by just being the arch representatives of Hindi cinema. (And Rajnikanth got his Japanese legions by approximating to the dark, flamboyant comic-hero.) SRK, on the other hand, seems to have a kind of cosmopolitan tinge that could genuinely speak to everyone.

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Mostly, it was delivered to us with that deliberate over-the-topness. But the quiet moments have a way of creating their own space too. In Swades, as a NASA scientist returning to his village, Shahrukh’s character, seated in a crowded train, buys water from a boy on a platform. The boy, running with the train to sell water for 25 paise per glass, triggers a transformation in the scientist. Intense, but understated. One of those moments that turned the 2004 film from “commercial” to “critically acclaimed”. It was perhaps bettered with some of those wordless glances in Chak De (2007), but otherwise it remained a minor stream in the SRK school of acting.

Swades came after Kal Ho Na Ho, Main Hoon Na and Veer Zara—the known ‘Raj-­Rahul’ territory for SRK. Without over-­analysing his choices—because the freedom to make them rests with the one making them—he did seem to step out of his comfort zone every now and then, only to go back, and then dart out again, a cautious guerilla. Paheli, then the swash-and-burn of Don, then the remarkably controlled Chak De….

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Metamorphosis

Shahrukh began his career with TV serials in the late 1980s­—Fauji being an early hit.

The journey for the 51-year-old Khan started with the aptly-tit­led Deewana. He’s visibly tired, yes, but as passionate about work and cinema—if not more, if that was at all possible. Raees, direc­ted by Rahul Dholakia, has set off some nice social media frenzy—helped along by talk of “researched” facts about bootlegging in 1980s Gujarat, denials about any connection to real-life don Abdul Latif, and other political pressure-points. It comes after Dear Zindagi, in which he played a counsellor to Alia Bhatt, and Fan in which he essayed both a film star and his innocent-turned-evil fan. Is this yet another experimental phase?

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“I think it’s better to go wrong doing the new than go right in doing the done. I really believe that,” Shahrukh tells Outlook (see interview). “Many times I’m blamed for doing the same. I don’t get that but I accept it. And I don’t do different for the sake of doing different. I do it because it’s important, it feels good and it’s high time. It does work out eventually.” With the VFX-heavy superhero flick Ra.One, for example, he did take a leap of faith factoring in the losses—“because if I don’t, who will?”

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Swades (2004)

In these 25 years, he has bought a bungalow on Bandstand, Bandra, set up Red Chillies Entertainment, hosted TV shows, bought a cricket team in the Indian Premier League, has a following of 23 million on Twitter, has two honorary doctorates, has been named a Chubbs Fellow at Yale University, and has had three children with Gauri Khan, his companion for three decades. Flops and controversies have stalked him on this journey but the dimpled star’s aura hasn’t ebbed.

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But after all these years, is he a conformist or not so much? “He’s doing films which are different now. Not to forget, he started out with Mani Kaul and Ketan Mehta,” says Anupama Chopra, film critic and author of King of Bollywood. “The films that made him a superstar are the YRF, Karan Johar films about affluent people living abroad but he has had his forays….” Any statement about his oeuvre has to be a qualified one.

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My Name Is Khan (2010) went on to add glitter to the star.

Posterity has conferred on his blink-and-miss role in In Which Annie Gives it Those Ones a jokey relevance. But his early wsork—the serials he did before his mother’s death in 1991, the early hero—gave notice of one on the verge of something big, partly bec­ause of his genre of looks, partly because of his strange ene­rgy. It seemed, over the years, that he had internalised a lot from the past, Dilip Kumar, Rajesh Khanna, Amitabh. But his acting persona was entirely of his own making—oscillating between the comedic and the noirish, both deliberately overblown, and the sun-kissed boy right out of Riverdale High.

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First blood was drawn by the anti-hero films, Baazigar and Darr, which SRK still credits to lack of choice. “Shahrukh was an outsider, what he has had to do is innovation. It’s well-known that no one was giving him the sweet boy roles. He took the villainous roles rejected by others. But they worked…because there was a certain passion. He was all heart,” says filmmaker Imtiaz Ali, who has SRK with Anushka Sharma for his next, a love story, yes, but a little “different”.  

SRK’s first ‘Raj’ may have come in Aziz Mirza’s Raju Ban Gaya Gentleman, but it wasn’t until DDLJ that he became the rom­antic hero that fans drool over and critics love to hate. The forgettable Trimurti, Ram Jaane and Chaahat apart, he teamed up with Abbas-Mustan, Yash Chopra, Karan Johar and Mani Ratnam to set the box office ringing. DDLJ continues hold on to its matinee show at Maratha Mandir even now—creating its own legend. A quick glance also throws up a quirky Maya Memsaab, and associations with Mani Kaul, Ketan Mehta, Kundan Shah et al—all genres. Every few years he returned to Aziz Mirza—Yes Boss, Phir Bhi Dil Hai Hindustani, all with Juhi Cha­wla, co-owner in his Kolkata Knight Riders team.

“I had not seen those serials when I first him on the sets of Raju Ban Gaya,” Juhi Chawla tells Outlook, reminiscing. “I was working with Azizji for the first time, they had already worked toget­her. I thought of it as a sweet love story. Shahrukh was extremely hard-working. He’d do 20 rehearsals, retakes till that one scene sparkled. He’d do three shifts a day…I was doing one. He wrote scenes together with Azizji. We clicked together. We had great times, but in our heart of hearts we were simple people. We wanted to work and do something nice and we had Azizji, who spoke of the common man, his aspirations. It was very endearing.”

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Juhi was also the leading lady in Darr, the object of Shahrukh’s obsessive stalker with the infamous kkkkkkiran stammer. This turn with YRF resulted in a long, happy association, full of the feted hits that exuded the glossy air of post-reforms India and brought in NRI audiences. Aziz Mirza, who says he no longer watches films, says the world is all about instant gratification now. “He’s a good boy, intelligent, good background. Also very aware, always understood value systems. He has had to move with the times. Maybe something more relevant is in the pipeline,” Mirza says.

Mahesh Bhatt, the maverick filmmaker whose daughter Alia recently had SRK in a supporting role, has known him for many years. It was on his urging that Khan decided to pen his yet-to-be-completed autobiography, Twenty Years in a Decade. Bhatt says, “He’s a national treasure. A self-made man who touched dizzying heights. Ultimately we are the stories we are shaped by. I felt he has a story. We know his professional world through filmmakers—larger than life and all that. But in his autobiography he gives you access to the inner sanctum of his heart. I had got a glimpse of this in the ’90s, sensed the depth, narrative flowing like a stream in him.” Khan is waiting to add more chapters (see interview).

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“Stars also get trapped in their image and what people or industry expects of them. It’s a plastic world, you know,” says Kundan Shah, who made Kabhi Haan Kabhi Na with Shahrukh. It was in fact his first film but did not find distributors for a long time—until Shahrukh himself stepped in. He loved the film so much that he bought rights to the film a few years ago. But by then, whether by choice or not—trapped he was. The open arms, sweet smile, hamming with tearful eyes, getting beaten up before screaming in extreme rage, trapped in all that.

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There were comparisons with Dilip Kumar and Bachchan (with whom there were rumours of differences)—the three posed together for a Filmfare cover in 2013. Not to mention the other two Khans—Salman and Amir. Their films, their personal equations, the great friendships and greater falling-outs. In between, there were oddities—Asoka, and much later Shimit Amin’s Chak De­. Then Farhan Akhtar’s delicious outing, the Don remake—another anti-hero, complete with guns and sexy women. But he only plays at macho, almost jokily. In his movies, the heroine’s name rolls before his in credits. There were also controversies: on the Chaiyya Chaiyya lyrics, on the word ‘barber’, Manoj Kumar taking umbrage at his portrayal in Om Shanti Om.

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Things started to get really worrying when Karan Johar’s My Name is Khan met with violent political protests about SRK’s positive statements about Pakistani cricket players— the avoidably gooey, over-the-top KJo signature ensures that controversy is what the film will finally be remembered for. But SRK has had to pay a price for being one of the most articulate and vocal among stars. And perhaps he has learnt his lessons the hard way.

“We live in unforgiving times,” says Bhatt. “An icon like him has so much riding on his shoulders. He doesn’t have the luxury to speak his worldview. It’s good to use tact in these times when you are walking in a field of mines and silly to become a sitting duck for somebody. There’s a certain amount of caution, it’s a reflection of the times we live in. He knows he is a solitary animal and is out there on his own without any political clout. He’s worldly-wise now but the whispers in his heart can be heard loud and clear by those who choose to tune into his art.” In his keynote address at Yale, SRK even described himself (and anyone creative) as a funa­mbulist, a tightrope walker.

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Juhi wants him to “look after his health”, but that tightrope must be walked because the hunger is still insatiable. Anupama believes the power and influence that comes with his territory can do wonders for the industry, if he wishes. “The three Khans are institutions by themselves. When they push the envelope, the envelopes move. I wish he should just go wild,” she says. “I know he believes his best is yet to come,” says Imtiaz Ali. The final word to Bhatt: “I told Alia that Dear Zindagi works because of that man. His energy, his large heartedness made the film sparkle. You can sense his aloneness, not loneliness. He has a light of his own. Like a beast in the jungle, a lion or tiger, alone and complete. I feel he will polevault out of that straitjacketed space.”

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