“Come to Calcutta for the first day first show of MNIK!”

— a tweet from a Calcuttan to a Mumbaikar on Wednesday.

Take it as a joke or just sound advice, but Shah Rukh Khan’s My Name Is Khan may well turn out to be a bigger — definitely safer — starter in Calcutta than in Mumbai this weekend.

On Bollywood’s home turf, Karan Johar’s biggie has the Shiv Sena boycott to deal with, while in Tolly land there is only a minor irritant in the form of a Citu-powered strike by “contracted staff and temporary workmen”.

The real challenge for My Name Is Khan, starting Friday the 12th, is whether it can match up to 3 Idiots at the box office. Decoded, can Shah Rukh Khan’s next beat Aamir Khan’s biggest? Or will it be two in a row for AK over SRK, after Ghajini trounced Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi?

KJo fights shy of this being billed as the SRK vs Aamir showdown — “I don’t want my film to be compared to 3 Idiots” — but for rival fans that is precisely what it is (see box).

If Friday does show the way, Shah Rukh has nosed ahead of Aamir by opening wider than the Rajkumar Hirani film. Not just worldwide — MNIK has around 2,500 screens to 3 Idiots’s 1,900 — the movie with the message “every Khan is not a terrorist” will be the biggest ever release in Calcutta.

“We are arriving on a record 130 screens in Bengal,” says Mahendra Soni of Shree Venkatesh Films, the distributors of the film in this region.

3 Idiots had hit around 100 screens on December 25. “Don’t forget, 3 Idiots is still going strong in its seventh week. It is the highest Bollywood grosser of all time,” said Arun Mehra of Aum Moviez, the distributor in this region.

The SRK-Kajol love story — looking to challenge the Aamir-Sharman-Madhavan-Kareena tale of life in the time of growing up — will have 118 plex shows on Friday, while 3 Idiots had opened with 106.

A four-screen plex like INOX (Forum) will screen MNIK a record 16 times a day. “We must give the two Khans an equal opportunity to perform,” laughs Captain Virendra Marya of INOX. “But seriously, with Veer and Rann doing so badly, Ishqiya running out of steam and Striker not doing anything at all, we didn’t have a choice but to go really big with MNIK.”

But the advance booking buzz for the journey of a man with Asperger syndrome to meet the US President for the sake of love is more at standalone theatres like Priya, Navina, Menoka, Paradise, Roxy and New Empire.

“It’s a terrific initial, as good as, if not better than, 3 Idiots,” says Pranab Ray of Menoka. “Almost 90 per cent of the 12 shows in the first weekend are sold out but how long this will sustain will depend on the merit of the movie.”

When it comes to block bookings by corporate houses, a plex is the first choice and SRK is a favourite. The count across eight properties has already crossed 30. “Shah Rukh is very popular with companies and with him starring opposite Kajol after years, that too for Valentine’s Day, it’s a natural pick,” is the word from Fame (South City), which has around 10 block bookings.

MNIK also is one up on 3 Idiots in the controversy game. If Chetan Bhagat’s demand for a story credit in the opening titles surfaced a few days after the release of the Vinod Chopra production and soon fizzled out, the Shiv Sena protests have fired interest in — and garnered sympathy for — the KJo film.

But trade analysts are not putting their money on Shah Rukh beating Aamir, not this time at least. “We are talking about a film about college kids with a universal message against a film about a father and mother with a social message….It will be very difficult for My Name Is Khan to match up to 3 Idiots,” sums up Mumbai-based Amod Mehra.

Time for Shah Rukh Khan to start chanting Aal izz well?

Will My Name Is Khan do better than 3 Idiots? Tell ttmetro@abpmail.com