“I do a 9-to-9 schedule, go home and have dinner with my kids at 10. Then I am with my daughter till she goes off to sleep. Next I play games with my son till 2. Gauri, by then, is ready to sleep. Then I work out for an hour or more. I take a bath and eat around 4 o’clock. Then I go to sleep and wake up around 7 to see my children off to school. If I have shooting I start getting ready, if I don’t, I sleep a bit more.” Picture by Pabitra Das

THE MAN, THE MOMENT

It was April the 9th. The main gate of Film City in Goregaon is a pilgrim point. The word is out — Shah Rukh Khan is doing an item number on the Farishtey Grounds at Mumbai’s shooting hotspot. Inside, our car is stopped short of Shah Rukh’s vanity van. “You have to walk the rest of the distance,” says the security guard manning the last lap of the star-yatra.

There he sits, inside the van. Wearing a blue-and-white Arabi jabba, a stainless steel flask of black coffee in hand, and a Gold Flake on his lips. He looks fighting fit at 42 and raring to go. “We have had lots of talk… let’s go and play now,” says the Kolkata Knight Riders King, with a dimpled smile.

The vanity van of the Bollywood Badshah looks almost ordinary. It’s the one Shah Rukh has been using for a decade or so. “Everyone’s gone for swanky vans… Salman (Khan) has a gym in his van, Anil (Kapoor) has an M.F. Husain-painted van… I have just stuck to the one I have always used,” shrugs SRK. The only indulgence? A Tata Sky dish antenna atop the van.

HIS FILMS, THEIR FILMS…

Shah Rukh starts off by filling us in on the movie he is shooting for. “It’s our new production called Billo Barber directed by Priyadarshan. I am just doing a small role. The main guy is being played by Irrfan. He wanted to do a film with us. So did Priyan. It’s a remake of a south Indian film Kadha Parayumbol. I haven’t seen it but I loved the script. I do these films which I believe in… the rest is up to the audience.”

By “these films”, he means an Asoka and a Paheli, not a Main Hoon Naa or an Om Shanti Om. “Chak De! India also came to me first and I really wanted to produce it but I was in a lot of debt after Asoka and I couldn’t afford it,” he reveals. “Shimit (Amin) used to work with us. He had come to me with this story about 16 Dharavi girls playing cricket. At that time Lagaan was still too recent and we decided to delay it. Then it became football and finally hockey!”

The other Khan, Aamir, may be known as the ideator and the ghost-director of his films, but Shah Rukh’s creative inputs are no less significant. “When I get a scene, I go through it and if I can think of a better suggestion I tell the director. It depends on him whether he wants to take it or not…. But just like cricket, I believe in working together in films. It’s teamwork. Like Paheli (director Amol Palekar) I didn’t enjoy doing; it had become a clash of egos.”

Not so in Chak De! “Like the last scene I had taken from a real-life incident which happened with the Japanese volleyball team at the Seoul Olympics. There too, the coach was the most animated person throughout the match but once the team won, he just went quiet. I wanted to add that saintly touch to Kabir Khan. Hence the beard, also.”

No chat about his favourite films is possible without a heavy dose of Don. “We wanted him to be a fan of old Hindi film songs and kill Roma’s brother while humming the song Suhani raat dhal chuki but it wasn’t very practical to shoot such a scene in Malaysia and we stuck to the poison and made Don a fan of Tom-and-Jerry cartoons. We may try that in the sequel. There too we want to keep the audience guessing throughout, expecting the big twist.”

Knock knock (on the vanity van door). “Sir, shot ready hain.” A couple of quick puffs later, Shah Rukh hops on to the huge blue-themed set of Billo Barber. The song he is shooting for is called Marjan, composed by Pritam. “Pritam is also doing two songs for the IPL album, which I plan to get out as soon as I can,” SRK says. “Bappida (Lahiri) has done two songs, then there’s Usha didi (Uthup). There’s a great track called Run. They want me to sing, but I can’t.”

A cursory check in the mirror and Shah Rukh is ready to rehearse the steps. Behind him is a bevy of foreign babes clad in bare minimum trying to create an Arab atmosphere. Four takes and the shot is done. “That was quick,” Shah Rukh chuckles. “But we would need five days for this song.”

“This song also features Kareena (Kapoor),” King Khan says, pointing towards the more plush vanity van parked on the other end of the set. “This is the village song. Then I have another song in the city with Deepika (Padukone). That will start the film. We want to show the difference between the city and the village in the film.”

Shah Rukh promises this is the first of many Red Chillies productions where he won’t play the lead. “Billo Barber is the start,” he lights another cigarette and puts on the Cartier shades. Is life very different playing producer, not actor? “Not really. I wouldn’t be coming to the sets if I don’t have shooting. I don’t even come to my own shoots,” he laughs out loud.

DAY IN THE LIFE OF SRK…

Ordering nimbu paani to battle the searing heat, Shah Rukh gives us a sneak peek of his daily schedule. “I do a 9-to-9 schedule, go home and have dinner with my kids at 10. Then I am with my daughter till she goes off to sleep. Next I play games with my son till 2. Gauri, by then, is ready to sleep. Then I work out for an hour or more. I take a bath and eat around 4 ’ clock. Then I go to sleep and wake up around 7 to see my children off to school. If I have shooting I start getting ready, if I don’t I sleep a bit more.”

A long pause later, the man admits: “I have a very hectic life. But I call it upon myself. So I can’t blame it on anybody. Karisma (Kapoor) came yesterday to Mannat. She saw a new area of our house. So, I was telling Kareena that Lolo has seen more parts of my house than me,” he laughs.

The one person who can completely unsettle Shah Rukh’s schedule is son Aryan. Like a three-day planned trip to Lucknow that got cancelled and left SRK free for 72 hours. “Whatever my wife and children tell me to do, I will do. All my planning is around them. I never question that at all. When they tell me that there’s a house party tomorrow, I will tell them I will be there. I never tell them there’s a shooting in the morning. I lie to them and somehow manage by partying till the early hours of the morning.”

The next shot is ready. Kareena steps out of her van in flowing white. The Asoka pair has a quick chat and for the next two hours they are busy shooting two lines: Tu mudke dekha na kar/ Sar mein soch aayega/ Paon mein moch aayegi… Around 6 in the evening the shot is finally canned. It’s pack-up for the unit, but not SRK; designer Anaita Shroff Adajania is here for a kurta trial.

He locks himself up in the van again but does come out to see Kareena off. “I’m sorry you had to see me doing foolish dance steps throughout the day; you must have got bored,” he apologises to t2.

Bored watching him? No way. A goodbye hug later he slips into the silver BMW (MH02-AU555) with the promise: “I’m coming (to Calcutta) on the 20th. Korbo, lorbo, jitbo. And wait, there’s two other words I have learnt. Ki ananda!”

Pratim D. Gupta
Send your message for Shah Rukh and his boys to t2@abpmail.com

HIS CHOICE

SOURAV or SACHIN

It’s a difficult choice. I am very, very fond of both of them. Sachin I know personally very well because we meet very often. I have always liked Sourav’s grit. I think they both are strangely similar yet different people. If you see the rightness, they are the same types.

EDEN GARDENS or WANKHEDE

Eden Gardens.

MUMBAI or CALCUTTA

As a place obviously Mumbai, because I live here. But if you ask from a sports perspective it has to be Calcutta.

KNIGHT RIDERS or KING’S XI or SUPER KINGS

There’s no choice. We have the King,they have just the name.

WICKETS or SIXES
I like clean bowled better than I like sixes.


T20 or ODI or TEST

Twenty20. There’s no comparison.

CRICKET or HOCKEY

Personally, hockey. When I have to watch, it’s cricket. If I have to play, it’s hockey.

CHAK DE! INDIA or OM SHANTI OM

Om Shanti Om

HIS FAVOURITE

Cricketer (past)

Farookh Engineer. I like him a lot. I was a wicket-keeper myself, so… I also like Alan Knott.

Cricketer (present)

I like Ishant (Sharma) a lot. I wanted young guys in my team. I wanted Ishant or Irfan. They came only in the end (of the auction). By then that is the amount of money we had left. So we went for Ishant.

Cricket shot

I like the one all these guys have developed for ODIs and Twenty20s, the one over the slips. I don’t know what it is called.

Film of all time

All the Pink Panther films. Baadshah and Duplicate were both inspired by the Pink Panther films. My comedy is inspired by Peter Sellers and Michael J. Fox.

Film of mine

I like Chak De! India, I like Om Shanti Om, I like Don... I like all my films!

Actor

Gregory Peck. He reminds me of my dad.

Actress
Michelle Pfeiffer, Angelina Jolie… I think they are very good looking.

Song

I like Suraj hua maddham and now I also like Aankhon mein teri. And Chhaiyya chhaiyya also.