From the India Today Archives (2023): All rise for King Shah Rukh Khan

'I am back, and not going anywhere,' he says. On his 59th birthday, we assess why Bollywood is firmly at SRK's durbar

(NOTE: This article was originally published in the India Today edition dated February 27, 2023)

Kings rule, but their reigns also come to an end. Shah Rukh Khan sat on the throne for nearly two decades, winning hearts, whether he was helping a young woman get on to a train, or dancing on top of it. He was everyman, and God. You laughed when he laughed, cried when he cried, felt a frisson of patriotism as he led a young Indian women hockey team to the rousing anthem of “Chak de! India” or returned home to Swades. You were happy when he fell in love, distraught when he was heartbroken. Pathaan co-star John Abraham put it best: “Shah Rukh is not an actor anymore, he is an emotion.”

For a while, though, that empire seemed shaken. Fans were unforgiving of mistakes, and cold to his experimentations. Great power, Khan learnt, came with great responsibility. Vulne­rability too. The end seemed nigh. But, four years later, SRK is back. As Badshah 2.0. In the face of all challenges, personal or professional. Defying controversy, and age. And his fans can’t have enough.

It was evident at the Taj Land’s End hotel where his staunchest supporters from across India had gathered in late January to hail the return of their king. Chants of “We love Shah Rukh” and “Bachche, Buddhe aur Jawan, sab dekhenge Pathaan” rang in the room. Young women sported T-shirts with his face. Men danced uninhibitedly to “Jhoome Jo Pathaan”, the song from the movie that has become a hit. Made on an estimated budget of Rs 250 crore, Pathaan has so far collected Rs 925 crore worldwide, and is the first Hindi film to breach the Rs 400 crore mark at home.

Its success has revitalised not just Khan’s career but also the Hindi film industry, which in recent years has been losing its audience to southern films dubbed in Hindi. It has even brought footfalls back to the strugg­ling single-screen cinemas. Pathaan is Khan’s first blockbuster since Chennai Express in 2013. His Bandra neighbours—Salman and Aamir—registered five of the top 10 biggest Hindi films in India in the past decade. With Pathaan, order is restored. Or, as an enthusiastic fan said, “SRK and Bollywood are back.” Abraham would correct him: “He had just gone for a loo break.”

WHY PATHAAN HAS STRUCK A CHORD
The film is a testament to the changing demands of Bollywood and Khan’s ability to meet them. At age 57, he has reinvented himself as a mass action hero with eight-pack abs—a quantum leap from the romantic, emotive and bubbly hero that had endeared him to a whole generation of moviegoers in the past. He has dabbled with action before—in the two Don films and Ra.One—but the effect has never been as thunderous. Khan has consciously wired himself to the changing tastes of the new generation that forms a sizeable section of the audience—one that ‘binges’ rather than sees and for whom a ‘reel’ is a short clip on Instagram. He is keen to familiarise himself with their ways and lingo. Pathaan’s dialogues are tailored for this generation. Like these words by a scientist in the film: “Science is easy, Farooqui. Love is hard.”

An out-and-out commercial potboiler, Pathaan doesn’t take itself too seriously, but makes sure it treats its audiences’ expectations sincerely. At a crisp two hours and 26 minutes, there is never a dull moment in the film, packed as it is with riveting action set pieces in foreign locales that reference many a Hollywood film. Writer Sridhar Raghavan and dialogue writer Abbas Tyrewala throw in some tongue-in-cheek humour, eschew excessive political commentary so as to not offend anyone and resist fever-pitch jingoism to promote goodwill and communal harmony.

The movie’s plot even has a female ISI spy (Deepika Padukone), who wins audience support for helping Pathaan battle an over-ambitious Pakistani general. At Land’s End, SRK used the composition of the movie’s cast to remind audiences that India’s diversity and its secular fabric are its biggest strength. He said, “This is Deepika, she is Amar, I’m Shah Rukh Khan, I’m Akbar and John, he is Anthony... We are ‘Amar, Akbar, Anthony’. And this is what makes cinemaâ€æ There are no differences any one of us have with any culture. We are hungry for audience’s love.”

Overall, though, it is Khan’s compelling performance as a vulnerable action hero that holds the movie together and wins the day. The film is mindful of Khan’s female fan base and never makes his masculinity toxic. Pathaan’s Achilles’ heel, we are told, is that he listens to his heart and pays a price for it. “When you think of SRK, you think of love,” says Pathaan director Siddharth Anand. “Pathaan had to be a guy who is heart over mind any day. It is a reflection of what he is in real life.” Simultaneously, he appeals to the frontbenchers, giving them a soldier who serves the nation that raised him. Pathaan is not a one-man army and invincible; he, in fact, needs rescuing—by Padukone and Salman Khan’s Tiger—as well as painkillers.

Part of the film’s appeal also lies in how much audiences are reading into the film’s dialogues, which are laden with references to his own past. Much like the broken spy whose body is held together with “biodegradable screws”, Khan has also undergone surgeries on his back, shoulder and knee. Again, like Pathaan, Khan too was written off only to rise again and save the day. It’s why the reference to ‘kintsugi’, a traditional Japanese pottery repair technique in which cracks are filled and missing pieces replaced with lacquer mixed with powdered gold, sits well with his persona. “Now that the film has done well, it will live on,” says Anand. “Raj and Rahul have taken a backseat; he is Pathaan for everybody now.” Raj is the character Shah Rukh plays in Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge and Rahul the one he essays in Kuch Kuch Hota Hai, respectively.

BEATING THE BOYCOTT CULTURE
For some, Pathaan’s success is vindication that hashtag boycott culture has little impact on a film’s fate at the box office. It is also proof that audiences missed Khan on the big screen, with an army of his fans choosing to watch the film on the first day and multiple times. “Every minute he was on screen was an ‘Ooh’ moment,” says filmmaker Gauri Shinde, who worked with him in Dear Zindagi. “We all wanted him to do well. There was so much emotion in the cinema. It felt like the old days of community viewing were back. That kind of loyalty and love is rare to find.”

Pathaan also demonstrates, for the time being at least, that the Khans are here to stay, despite the doubts swirling around the Khan triumvirate’s dominance in recent times, especially after Aamir-starrer Laal Singh Chaddha tanked. Nothing captures it better than the standout post credits scene, where SRK’s Pathaan tells Salman Khan’s Tiger that after three decades of duty he is debating if it’s time to hang his boots. Wondering who’d take over the mantle, Pathaan concludes tongue-in-cheek, but making his point: “Humein hi karna padega, bhai. Desh ka sawaal hai, bachchon pe nahin chhod sakte (We will only have to do it. You can’t leave the nation in the hands of kids).”

“The next generation [of actors] doesn’t have that kind of sway,” says a film professional who has worked with all three Khans. “The Khans aren’t going anywhere. How many actors can register massive openings? How many [actors] have films in the Rs 300 crore club?” Filmmaker and author Nasreen Munni Kabir, who interviewed and followed Khan in 2004-5 for the BBC documentary The Inner & Outer World of Shah Rukh Khan, says, “There will never be a history book written about Indian cinema where SRK is missing. It is true of all the three Khans. They are absolutely embedded and interwoven in how Indian cinema has developed since the 1990s.”

TRIALS AND TRIBULATIONS
For SRK, the return has taken a while—1,484 days, to be precise. In between, the failure of a spate of films, including Fan (2016), Jab Harry Met Sejal (2017) and Zero (2019), to live up to the lofty box office expectations of an SRK-starrer led to some soul-searching. His choice of scripts and ability to draw the crowds began to get questioned. As Khan took 2019 off to recalibrate, he had no theatrical release for the first time since his debut in 1992. The Covid-19 pandemic extended his break. However, the bigger adversity was to come not in his career but in his personal life.

In October 2021, the Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB) arrested Aryan Khan, the eldest of his three children, outside a cruise ship on charges of consumption, sale and possession of drugs. Aryan, just shy of 25, spent 22 days in jail as his father convened a battery of the country’s best lawyers to secure his bail. Seven months later, the NCB dropped the charges.

The damage, though, was done. Even as a large section of the Hindi film industry rallied behind Khan, sections of the media and keyboard warriors mobilised to attack him. One of the most media-savvy celebrities, Khan had refrained from issuing any statement during or after his ordeal. The silence did not stop the attacks. Shoots of two of his films, Pathaan and Jawan, were disrupted. In those times, Khan is said to have often sought refuge in a bathroom, a sanctuary, his dear ones say, where he could weep in peace.

This time, though, they must be tears of joy. “Main woh chaar saal bhool gaya hoon pichhle chaar din ke andar (The last four days have made me forget the last four years),” he says. Few would have anticipated Pathaan would shatter so many records, especially given the events that transpired months before its release. Khan had to intervene personally, making calls to a few chief ministers to ensure his film had a smooth release, after a few politicians in the ruling party took offence to the saffron shade of his co-star Deepika Padukone’s swimwear in the track “Besharam Rang”. “Anybody who has faced so much in life, in the past or recently, has to be a strong person,” says Rajkumar Hirani, who is currently working with Khan in the December release, Dunki. “Anybody under that kind of pressure will bog down. You have to be a fighter, survivor, mentally strong and extremely intelligent to be able to deal with this.”

And deal with it he did, even though Khan said the past two months were especially “stressful”. Karan Johar gives a brief glimpse of the man in his autobiography, An Unsuitable Boy, which perhaps can help us understand the man behind the icon.

“I think when he hurts,” Johar writes of Khan, “he becomes quiet.” That quietness, however, is not to be confused with capitulation, rather it is a time for Khan to gather himself. And his absence from the big screen didn’t mean he was not working. When the pandemic interrupted film schedules, Khan learned how to cook Italian food. Pathaan’s cast and crew were treated to pizzas made by him while shooting in Mumbai. Khan also used his free time to be with his three children—Aryan, Suhana and AbRam.

“There is no reason for my life except my children,” he had told INDIA TODAY magazine in 2016 while promoting Fan. “I need to push them and make something nice out of them and my films.” He has been content with his and Gauri’s parenting. At the Sharjah International Book Fair in November 2022, when asked what achievement his parents would be most proud of, Khan said they’d be “happy” with the way he has brought up his children.

SHAH RUKH THE MAN
“I am very proud to say I get scared sometimes, I feel sad sometimes, I lose confidence many times in a day,” Khan said at the only publicity event for Pathaan. But amid the lows, he is mindful of the hundreds who stand outside his house daily, with a mannat just to get a glimpse of their idol. “They love me absolutely...it is selfless and beautiful,” he said in Sharjah. “Whenever I am down, I just need to go out and there is a sea of people. I make sure of this happiness that they give me, I can give it back.”

A lot of it has to do with the kind of person Shah Rukh is. The most recent testimony comes from cricketer Cheteshwar Pujara’s father Anand Pujara, when he revealed that the actor had insisted that Pujara’s hamstring injury in 2009 be treated in South Africa itself, offering to fly the family doc and any number of family members if required.

That magnetic charm that you see on the screen is part of the man himself, not an affectation. He uses it to make people feel special, along with a self-deprecating humour to put them at ease. Writers and directors cite how articulate, sharp and astute he is. They also praise his work ethic—despite being a nocturnal creature, he turns up for shoots at 7 am. There is also tremendous self-confidence: Khan believes he’s the best. And he knows how to captivate his audience even when the camera is off. “Abhijat [Joshi] and I just sit and listen to him most of the time,” says Hirani. “He is such a well-read guy. We have discussed everything under the sun, from cinema to sports to religion.”

Some like Padukone, his co-star in four films, admire his perceptiveness (see interview). “He is extremely intelligent in terms of understanding people and relationships and extremely aware of his surroundings. He is sensitive to all of that.”

MAKING OF AN ACTION HERO
While Khan is hailed and loved as the “king of romance”, he actually loves action films. “He likes larger-than-life cinema,” says an assistant director turned writer who worked with him. “For him, movies are magic, there has to be big drama, big-ticket stuff.”

Post the failure of Zero, Khan set aside a year to meet filmmakers and hear the stories they had. Then Aditya Chopra called. The writer-director-producer finally acted on the promise he had made Khan three decades back: to offer him an action film. “When SRK was going through his tough phase, Adi was of the belief that whatever YRF is today has so much contribution from SRK that he felt it is his responsibility to at least try and make a big film for him,” says Yash Raj Films CEO Akshaye Widhani. Chopra ended up making YRF’s most expensive film to date. Khan was grateful for the chance that he was seeking. He also wasn’t in a rush to finish any film.

PICTURE ABHI BAAKI HAIâ€æ
The year 2023 has started on a bright note, but Khan is not even halfway through his comeback. He has two highly-anticipated releases lined up: Jawan and Dunki. The year is all the more special because his daughter, Suhana, makes her debut in the Zoya Akhtar-directed feature The Archies, which releases on Netflix later this year. The 22-year-old has been prepping for it at least since 2014, maintaining a diary in which she records the many words of wisdom from her ‘papa’. “Everything I don’t know of acting, I have put it there for you to learn and teach me back, little one,” replied Khan when she recently shared photos of it on Instagram.

Khan’s eldest, Aryan, has kept a lower profile since the NCB saga. A graduate of the University of Southern California’s School of Cinematic Arts, he has written a series, which Khan’s banner, Red Chillies Entertainment, is producing. The youngest, nine-year-old AbRam, is the most doted on member of the family, witnessing his father’s stardom as Khan stands on the balcony to strike his trademark pose. “He needs to see it like others have,” Khan told the magazine. “So I have to work like that.”

Working he is, so much so that public appearances have become few and far between. When he isn’t shooting, he is on Twitter doing #AskSRK sessions expressing gratitude for the fans’ love, and giving witty replies. Once a celebrity who embraced the spotlight, he now shies from it. Magazine covers don’t matter. Our request for an interview was politely turned down. The reticence does not come from a loss of confidence.

“I don’t think I need to be nervous, I think they are all going to be superhit films,” he said in Sharjah, when asked if he’s anxious about his upcoming releases. “That’s the belief I sleep and wake up with and which makes me at the age of 57 go and do stunts and work 18 hours a day.” Coming from others, this assertion may sound pompous, but Khan makes it seem like he’s letting you in on a secret or simply stating a fact.

Back at Land’s End, as the decibel levels in the room grow louder and fans jostle for his attention, Khan tries to calm them down. “Abhi jo waapis aaya hoon, kahin nahin jaa raha hoon (Now that I am back, I am not going anywhere).” It has the opposite effect. They erupt. In joy. The Badshah in his darbar.