March 23, 1998

With three hits last year, the irreverent yuppie star is the new king of Bollywood. Best of all, he's got there by breaking the rules.

By Rohit Brijanth and Anupama Chopra

First day. First look. He steps out of his trailer in Film City, black jeans, black bandanna, black earring. Smoke surrounds him, trailing out from what he calls "my luscious lips" and from the glass of tea. It is the only aura he has. There is nothing to suggest celebrity, no scent of the star so worshipped that when he flicks away cigarette butts people pick them up as souvenirs. "I enjoy that," he says. "It's embarrassing," he adds. Contradiction is his best friend. Here at the set, no one calls him chief, boss, God. He is plain, simple Shah Rukh. Except he's no plain, simple guy. When our photographer is asked to leave the set by a production manager, he reminds you of it. His face creased with that smile that makes women go all silly, he tells the unit hand, "Theek hai. Usko bolo Shah Rukh bola, India's biggest star."

Shah Rukh Khan, 32 going on whatever his mood is, is flippant, outrageous, arrogant, intelligent, impossible to trip and pin down. Ask him a question, and he responds with attitude. Hey dude, how come you have three hits running -- Dil To Pagal Hai, Pardes, Yes Boss -- when all you've got is five expressions. Aw, gee, he replies, "It's just that the rest have only four." Comic bluster aside, he must be wondering too that hard work and "my mother holding God's ears and telling him take care of me" doesn't quite explain the phenomenon that's unfolding. This is, after all, a man who spends mornings deflecting advances from women who have left their husbands and want to marry him.

He has Rs 50 crore-Rs 60 crore riding on him (every film of his costs a minimum Rs 6 crore-Rs 7 crore, his fee a rumoured Rs 1.5 crore-Rs 2 crore), and no wonder producers turn white if you ask what would happen if he, you know, were to expire. He's the people's favourite, and at this point Amitabh Bachchan fans may as well leave the room. Every year since 1994, the Movie magazine poll has asked who's the favourite hero; every year Bachchan won. Not this time -- he got 24 per cent of the vote, Shah Rukh got 47. Awards, he has so many, it explains why he's rented a bigger house. This year's quota was the Filmfare Best Actor Award for Dil To Pagal Hai (he was nominated in the same category for Pardes too). That makes it three Best Actor awards, a Best Villain, a Critics Award, a Best Newcomer Award. No wonder he once giggled, "All that's left is the Best Actress."

Look in the oddest of places and he turns up. Even in IMRB surveys. As Probe Qualitative Research -- one arm of IMRB -- Director Dina Dastur says, "Housewives pick him as a good role model for their kids. Bachchan was a star, Khan is more real." No kidding. Parents of a young boy approach him to speak to their son who believes Shah Rukh is his father; an old lady turns up claiming to be his mother.

Even trade pundits, masters of the art of the hem and haw, admit he is (as of now) No. 1. Sunny Deol, the other contender, can have the bullock carts and village belles and rule in all those places yet to be invaded by yuppies; in the cities here and abroad, Shah Rukh rules. Suited, booted, all style and guile, he's leading Bollywood's new hip generation. Says Film Information Editor Komal Nahta: "He's God overseas."

So dude, let's be clear on this. With those brown eyes proclaiming innocence, Tommy Hilfiger clothes, glib tongue, you must be the pinnacle of Bollywood yuppiedom, the style and star of the '90s? He grins. "The '90s? Make that star of 2010 or maybe 2020."

At the sets, between shots, he talks. Incessantly. Comic soliloquies punctuated by cigarette puffs. The entertainer never at rest. He's opening up, showing you his heart? He's actually taking you for a ride. "I just use the press to practise my acting." Once he chased a journalist who wrote of some imagined infidelity; now he smiles, "I haven't done that for some time, must be losing my edge." He exhales irreverence and no one has immunity. Just now he's educating co-star Aishwarya Rai on subverting the industry. Like how to sleep through screenings of other people's films: "Once a director woke me up and asked, 'How was my film?' I said it was so deep that I felt I was in my mother's womb and went to sleep."

So Shah Rukh is wrapped in a cling-film of cockiness. So, why not? It's what's made him.

Heroes in Bollywood aren't born, they're constructed. There are rules to be followed to gain stardom, a prescribed staircase to be walked to heaven. Dress well, young men are told, wear shirts that are advertising hoardings for Versace, designer jeans so tight they could put your reproductive organs in danger. Be modest, respect your elders, repeatedly say "Without Ghaiji I would be nothing". Remember, married heroes alienate women fans, if you have a wife lock her in the cellar. Play established roles, stay on the beaten path; the action hero who kills his sister's rapist is a judicious choice; the lover who runs away with the girl is fine too.

It means of course that Shah Rukh must be a figment of our imagination. Or maybe he's just historically challenged. For he's taken an entirely different elevator to success. He has no hairstyle -- call it a "Sadhana cut" -- and with his baggy trousers and shirt crumpled, sweaty and half tucked in, is a walking, sartorial nightmare. "Arre," he explains, "all my clothes are from some film's wardrobe." He has no muscles. He can't dance, though he swears "I'm Michael Jackson." He's not just married -- "two producers actually asked me to cancel it" -- he flaunts his relationship with wife Gauri. He won't pose with actresses for film shoots, yet happily mocks his own celebrity: "Successful stars usually say 'I'm a humble servant of my masses.' I just say I'm the best." But best of all he plays roles other actors break into hives just thinking of. As he laughs: "I'm the only actor whose sister has never been raped."

His resume is nothing but an eccentric compendium of roles, all suggestive of a certain temerity. The killer in Baazigar (a role rejected by Anil Kapoor and Salman Khan), psychopath in Darr (audiences actually clapped when he stabbed Sunny Deol), mute bonded labourer in Koyla, pimp in Yes Boss, the second fiddle hero in Pardes. "These are novel roles, they have shock value," he explains. But it hardly detracts from his unshakeable conviction in pursuing the bizarre, his constancy in believing stardom has a back door. As he admits, "When I signed Baazigar, other producers said you can't do this to us. When it succeeded, they said I'll never do well as a hero." Audacity has paid off and as Mahesh Bhatt says, "He's not been frightened of making a fool of himself."

It seems a trifle rude to mention that for all his unusual roles, he can be a rather usual actor who thinks S. Khan and Company is the only (over) acting school in town. Critics like Ashish Radhyadaksha say: "He can't hold complicated narratives, he goes over the top." For Shah Rukh, this is yuppie hell; he knows he's still an actor in the making, he just can't admit he's not God. It shows in his answers. He mutters that Robert de Niro is stylised too, then argues that he's spent time learning from Naseeruddin Shah; he maintains that he is completely different in Mani Ratnam's forthcoming Dil Se, then sneers that he plays to the gallery not the critics. Still his exuberance has many defenders. Rakesh Roshan says, "If he's limited, it's only because we directors are limited." Madhuri Dixit calls him, "A great actor, a generous actor who never steals a scene because he knows unless everybody is part of a scene it won't work."

His virtues include a crackling intensity, an unrestrained enthusiasm that flows from him as he says, "I go into every film thinking it's better than the Titanic." Sleep is not part of this man's cycle. He is relentless. Says friend Karan Johar, presently directing him in Kuch Kuch Hota Hai: "He gives you 15 suggestions every take." Add directors Abbas-Mastan: "Sometimes we have to tell him enough, go home." He won't, sitting there trying to twist his character further, as Madhuri says, "adding bits and pieces that create magic". Whatever, he has forged a contrary appeal that works. Hindi cinema offers the unreal, the absurd, a tryst with fantasy characters; yet Shah Rukh brings a down-to-earth affability to the screen that has found identification. "Other characters the audience can't identify with. But they see me and say 'Hum to aisa hai'. There's a quality about me that's reachable."

The woman finds him, whichever set he's on. Dressed in salwar kurta, from a Mumbai suburb, she's back today, a stranger with a fatal attraction. She sits and sits, courting him silently with her eyes, then finally in the evening she corners him. Berating him -- "Main subhe se baithi hoon" -- she ties a 'I Love You' bracelet on his wrist. He stands, not smirking nor impatient nor disdainful, waiting as she fumbles. "Utaarna mat" she pleads. He lies gently. "Kabhi nahin, magar shooting ke liye nahin pahen sakta hoon." There's a softness to him. A minute later, look again and it's vanished, and he's all laughing pomposity. "Even if Hollywood offered me Titanic, I wouldn't take it. Of course if it was Shah Rukh Khan in and as Titanic, now that would be something."

Contradiction shadows Shah Rukh. It is apparent in his success, it is evident in his manner as a man. Over three days of interviewing, he is ebullient, expansive. Yet, say his friends, the extroverted demeanour is a mask. As the actor confesses, "I'm lonely. I also hate being alone. I need to be with people, with an audience. An empty hall is my worst nightmare." Mahesh Bhatt calls him a schizophrenic, a man with two people lurking inside, working ceaselessly to fill the emptiness within him. "I've seen him in his most stressful moments, when the newspapers reported he was next on the mafia hit list, yet he came and did a comic scene for Duplicate. He is an ordinary man with extraordinary determination."

Much of the 26-year-old boy -- to see his zest in his early films precludes the usage of the word "man" -- who came to Mumbai with Rs 15,000 in his pocket and stayed in Aziz Mirza's flat, has not disappeared. Just the lifestyle has altered. The days of driving a beat-up Gypsy have gone. Now he owns a Pajero and a Mercedes, and has a bank balance that might rival some African countries' GDP. (Of course he says he doesn't have money to buy a new car.) He enjoys these accoutrements -- "I deserve the money I've made but it's also just a peripheral" -- he enjoys public adulation too, yet he is wary of its addictive lure. "I know people are just reacting to my persona, not to me. And if I get used to it, in five years I'll be screwed."

Finding him is easy. If he's not on the sets, he's at home with his brat pack -- Johar, director Aditya Chopra, Chikki Pandey (Chunky's brother), Jai Mehta (Juhi Chawla's fiancee) -- fiddling on his computer or playing board games. The obsessive lover of Darr plays M-M-M-Monopoly! To them the arrogance that defines him elsewhere -- and he does admit, "When I meet pompous people, I think shit I'm like that" -- does not tell a complete story. Abbas-Mastan who say "he's a habit", shine when they recount how Shah Rukh, having won the Filmfare Award for Baazigar, came straight to their house in Bhendi Bazar. "He said he couldn't go home with the trophy without meeting us first." Johar talks of his sensitivity. Of a day in Prague when Juhi lost her mother. "Yet, he managed to make Juhi smile. He told her, 'By now your mom must have met my dad and they're probably discussing our careers and how we've done so well.' He never left her side, making her feel her mother had gone to a truly special place."

If his wife Gauri, who he's calling about 20 times a day since she's in Delhi, is his anchor -- "She just wants to be Gauri, I want to be Vijay, Ramesh, Anil, Badshah" -- it is these friendships, shorn of sycophancy, that root Shah Rukh to reality. Mirza noticed this. "I thought success would affect him but I find him more mature and mellow. Luckily the people around him aren't busy saying 'Aapka jawaab nahin'. They say 'Aapka jawaab hai'."

In his AC trailer, midway through a shave, he vocally grapples with his future. "Two years left of wacky films then maybe something else." Nevertheless, he's already agreed to just 13 scenes or so in a Madhuri-drive film, "because Madhuri deserves a film for herself". He's wondering too about what legacy his son deserves. "I want to leave him five films to see and not get embarrassed. I don't want him to see my films and say, 'Oh, Shah Rukh's not my dad, he just adopted me'. I want him to say, 'Hey dad, you were cool'." So how many films done so far qualify? "Just one really. Kabhi Haan, Kabhi Naa." In the film, he plays a loser who fails his exams, loves a girl who marries someone else. It is a role, he says, that resembles him the closest. Um, er, perhaps it should be pointed out that this loser is driving a Mercedes. But what the hell. Maybe Johar was right all along when he said, "You can't explain Shah Rukh Khan. You can only experience him."

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