I’m excited to have senior journalist Subhash K Jha join the MissMalini family and look forward to his insights! Here’s his first piece on a phone conversation he had with SRK way back in the day. – MissMalini
I don’t know if Shah Rukh Khan remembers this. But way back in 2001, when Hrithik Roshan had swept the nation off its collective feet with Kaho Na….Pyar Hai and the inquisitive television cameras had caught him looking distinctly surly when Hrithik got the Best Actor award, Shah Rukh called me late one night to vent his anger and cynicism at what he thought was an outrageous suggestion of professional insecurity.
“Do they really think I’d get nervous about a newcomer at this stage of my career?” Shah Rukh said nervously. He said a lot of other unprintable things. Back in those days, when the landline phones were my lifeline to Bollywood, stars actually opened up with their deepest secrets.
This is the only time I had ever seen the King Khan sound so cut up about the competition (which he said he did not see as competition). Much water has flown under the bridge. Shah Rukh Khan is now in a space where he needn’t fear any competition. But today, when he is again pitched against Hrithik Roshan at the box office, I wonder what his honest thought are.
Is he saying, ‘Bhala isski safedi mere safedi se zyada safed kaise ho sakti?’ Forget the 101 rapidly-ruminative interviews where Shah Rukh was heard speaking of his immense confidence in Raees and what a terrific co-star Nawazuddin Siddiqui is. Praising your co-star just before the release of an eagerly awaited film is the oldest trick in the book of one-upmanship to put the audience off the trail. Shabana Azmi started this trend 33 years ago when, before the release of Mahesh Bhatt’s Arth, she went on and on about how good Smita Patil was in the film.
Of course Smita was good. But Arth belonged to Shabana. Raees belongs to Shah Rukh Khan. As Raees, a quasi-fictional avatar of a Gujarati bootleg seller turned smuggler turned politician, Shah Rukh immerses his unmistakably patented mannerisms into the character. This is one of his finest, most unaffected performance since Chak De. Absolutely shorn of vanity and fearless in his determination to delink the demons of his characters from his own personality, the superstar shines in an unseen light.
This time he doesn’t flatter to deceive. He plays Raees from the heart. But hey, Hrithik in Kaabil will get all the women sobbing into their handkerchiefs. As a husband seeking revenge for wrongs done to his wife, Hrithik is what Aamir Khan in Ghajini would have been had he had been blinded by love and fury.
Both the central performances this Republic Day were so liberating I wanted to hoist flags in their honour, sing paeans and recite honorary poems. Which of the two performances has the audience warmed up the most? I can’t say. But one thing is for sure. It’s like choosing between Amitabh Bachchan in Deewaar and Rajesh Khanna in Amar Prem. If one freezes your heart, the other melts it.
If Hrithik wins all the awards for Kaabil, I won’t have Shah Rukh on the phone performing a 1 am rant.