Long before he became Bollywood's 'King Khan', a 10-year-old Shah Rukh Khan would deliver samosas and tea to students at Delhi's National School of Drama (NSD), veteran actor Pankaj Kapur recalled in a recent interview.
Speaking on Kindle Cast's YouTube podcast, Kapur reminisced about his days as an NSD student in the mid-1970s. "I think his uncle or father used to run the canteen at that time," he said.
Kapur remembered young Shah Rukh regularly bringing snacks backstage and during theatre intervals.
Two decades later, Kapur played a supporting role in Rajiv Mehra's 1995 action thriller Ram Jaane, headlined by Shah Rukh Khan.
According to media reports, Shah Rukh's father, Mir Taj Mohammed Khan, owned the popular Delhi restaurant Khatir in Safdarjung but spent much of his time managing the mess at NSD. After his father's death in 1981, Shah Rukh's mother, Lateef Fatima Khan, took over the restaurant until her death in 1990.
Although Shah Rukh never formally enrolled at NSD, he forged a lifelong connection with the institution. After school, he would often wait there for nearly two hours every day for his elder sister, Shehnaz Lalarukh Khan, watching rehearsals by some of the country's finest theatre artistes.
Shah Rukh is currently awaiting the release of Siddharth Anand's high-octane action film King, slated to hit theatres on December 24.