Watching Shah Rukh Khan at any of the IPL matches at Eden Garden, nobody would suspect that this active man who swings between being the keen owner of a team and an effervescent actor, has been long due for an important surgery.

That really is the distinguishing line between cricketers and Hindi film heroes. Both are prone to serious injury and fracture at a young age due to the physically strenuous nature of their respective jobs. But while a cricketer cannot always camouflage his physical discomfort (it shows up in his game at some stage or the other), men like Shah Rukh and Hrithik Roshan bash on regardless, without the viewer getting even a whiff of their painful woes.

While shooting a very energetic dance for his film Krrish 3, Hrithik had talked of how he’d learnt to simply live with the pain. “Even if I get up and walk up to that door,” he said, sitting in his vanity van, “I’m in pain. I’m perpetually in pain.” But he has begun to help himself. By researching his ailments extensively and intensely, Hrithik has devised exercises that give him relief and he has rustled up a range of tasty healthy recipes that keep him looking good. Earlier his back and then his knees have been trouble spots for years but none of that comes in the way of his career. Whether he’s on stage picking up big bucks for a live performance or he’s grinding his hips (strictly for a dance sequence) before the camera, the pain is pushed into the background. Only the hero remains under the spotlight, his invincible image intact. That’s where films have an edge over sports — there are no retakes or choreographed, rehearsed moves on the cricket pitch.

Shah Rukh Khan is scheduled to wind up all his Chennai Express work, his IPL matches and sundry other commitments before he flies out in July-August for shoulder surgery. It was his back a few years ago, it’s his shoulder that needs medical attention now. Even after his last surgery, the pain never completely vanished from his system. “It doesn’t go away, you just learn to live with it,” he had characteristically grinned.

With surgery written into his schedule, where does that leave Farah Khan’s Happy New Year? It’s been over a year since the two former friends decided to join forces and make the film. This was the script that Farah had written long before Tees Maar Khan fell into her plate by default. Shah Rukh is committed to making HNY with Farah (he has, as everybody knows, graciously offered her a co-production so that she is not just a director employed by his company, Red Chillies). But when, is the big question.

Chennai Express is expected to be Khan’s big Eid outing this year in August. Will SRK finally let HNY take off around that time and offer it as his eidi to Farah? (Eidi is a gift, usually money, given by the elders to the younger members of a family during Eid.) Or, will it be Shah Rukh’s Diwali gift to her if the film gets postponed further? They’re questions that must be buzzing in Farah’s head as well.

Meanwhile, there seems to be a wee bit of tension between Farah and Sajid, not very noticeable but at least in the way each operates without showing much loyalty to the other. A case in point is Sajid Khan’s comfort in working with Sonakshi Sinha (she did that immensely forgettable item song in his Himmatwala), unmindful of the way Farah feels about her after the Joker experience where she and Akshay distanced themselves from the film.

Sajid Khan is now slated to make a film with Saif Ali Khan, Amitabh Bachchan and Riteish Deshmukh, to be shot in London. Girlfriend Jacqueline Fernandes is very much a part of this film and there is a whisper that perhaps Sonakshi Sinha will also be signed for it. So, professionally, Sajid and Farah are moving in two different worlds and the bone of contention is said to be — you guessed it — husband Shirish Kunder. Shirish is not the most popular guy in town and brother-in-law Sajid is reportedly not one bit close to his sister’s choice.

Bharathi S. Pradhan is editor, The Film Street Journal