When you started off, you didn’t belong to the movie community; you were reasonably educated at a time when Bollywood wasn’t a place for reasonably educated, middle-class people. Where did the whole aspect of being a Bollywood star come from?
It wasn’t a calculated process. When you see how and where life leads you, you start believing in destiny. Obviously, you’ve made certain choices to go a certain direction. But mostly, where you started off from, and where you’ll end up, can’t be explained. I hear stories of people who say, ‘When I was small I got this small bioscope and I started filming. I knew I always wanted to be a filmmaker’. I don’t have any romantic thoughts of how, since I woke up one day, I’ve wanted to be a Hindi film actor. Now that I’m writing my own book, and I talk to people, I say, yes, I used to dance to Mumtaz, so we can start finding reasons there. I have done Ramleela. I used to do shaayari, really bad; nearly as bad as my acting, and I was popular for that as well! I was very interested in theatre. But so was I interested in hockey, cricket and football.
Even now, an urban kid, who’s graduated in Economics from Delhi’s Hansraj College, or schooled at St. Columbus, will think thrice before packing his bags for Mumbai to become the proverbial ‘Bollywood hero’.
I would as well. The first time I went to university in DTC (Delhi’s local) buses, I heard about Hum Log (popular Doordarshan soap), while I was talking Family Ties. People would sing ‘Khaike Paan Banaras Wala’, while I would buy (radio-recording) tapes of Kasey Kason. I’d wear Nike shoes, leather jackets, would want to have a mo-bike.
There were no I-pods, but I had my walkman. I didn’t have any aspirations to be a Hindi film actor. But I had aspirations as students have, of being a part of English theatre. I’m glad I did, because I think I learnt a lot from there .Of course Barry (John) completely disassociates his name from me, because he doesn’t think I learnt enough. I think things led up to where I was, with the sudden advent of television for me.
My father had passed away, we didn’t have a house, and we were looking for a rented place through a property dealer, Mr Diwan, who my mother wanted me to see. When he learnt I was an actor, he suggested to my mother that I see his father-in-law Lekh Tandon, who was making a television series (Fauji). For Lekh Tandon, I was a case of mistaken identity.
We were doing a play in Urdu, Baghdad Ka Ghulam, for Raghuveer Yadav. Because Raghu bhai was so good, but he couldn’t speak English, Divya Seth, me and others did the play with NSD actors. We only did English theatre, but none of us, including Barry, were pseudo enough. We decided to speak Urdu. And I could. In the play, I wore a beard, and Lekh Tandon considered me suitable for a grown-up Sardar-like role. For two days he let me sit on the sets, because I looked too young. He let me do the serial purely out of the goodness of his heart. And then I got a call from Mumbai, from Kundan Shah, Aziz and Saeed Mirza’s company; these three made me feel like a star, like Michael J Fox from Family Ties in my own Indian world. These were people whose works I had grown up with. At a certain age, you like that kind of cinema, Salim Langde Pe Mat Ro, Holi, Mirch Masala… Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro was an all-time favourite.
So when I was leaving for Mumbai for a year, my friends asked me if I could just go and kiss Kundan Shah’s feet for them. When I saw Kundan, he just looked so different from what I thought he would be like. While this was happening, my mother died.
I was very depressed. Aziz had become like a father to me, and his family my surrogate family; they looked after me. The only thing that attracted me to Hindi cinema was the people I met and the sense of humour we shared. Juhi (Chawla); Vivek Vaswani, who said I could do a film. I didn’t even have the right accent in place then.
Somebody recently showed me a review of one of my Delhi plays, which says, “His accent shifts between South Hall and Safdarjung Enclave.”
So if you’d come down in the ’80s you could well have been an art-house actor. It’s not that you came here and started meeting the Subhash Ghais of the world.
Quite possible; I met Subhashji and the others because of my friends (Aziz, Ketan…). To their credit, none of them ever looked down upon commercial cinema. There were people from art-house who looked down upon commercial cinema, I never worked with them. From the outside one can keep on harping about how stupid Indian cinema is. But can we get inside and change it a little? Without modesty, I can say that I haven’t got NRIs, fashion or acting to Indian cinema. I think other actors have done that. I have brought education, which has also brought in a set of directors, writers, producers and media people.
Four years into films, I recall meeting my aunt in London. I was a star, had a Mercedes, and lived in a five-star hotel; and she said, “All that’s great, but when are you going to start working?” My aunt was a highly qualified GP, had been in London for 25 years. So I refer to a time when all the girls were supposed to be air-hostesses; and boys, doctors or engineers. Now they can think about becoming an actor.
Did your friends or family think you’d become this famous?
Except for my mom who thought I was Dilip Kumar. Every mother now thinks her son is Shah Rukh Khan. I just told my friends I was going to be back in Delhi in a year, so they’re still waiting for me. I’ll never go back because I have invested a lot in this damn house.
About 15 years of being a successful leading man, does the constant competition and ephemeral nature of fame take you away from actually enjoying it while it lasts?
Clichéd as it may sound, from the day I came here to the day that I became a producer, and today that I’ve been around for 16 years, “Living Legend”, “King Khan”, “Badshah of Bollywood”, I haven’t believed in the myth. I’m still trying to do what I came here to do; have a good time, acting. I saw Kabhi Alvida Na Kehna two days ago, and I am not interested in the film anymore. I’m not deriding the film. But I’m interested in getting up in the morning and going, “Chuck it now!” I have even mellowed now, I have started taking it easier after my neck surgery, and my kids have become quieter, less energetic, less hyper and less angry.
But you’ve mentioned about the fear of anonymity before.
You fear anonymity from the day you’re born. I don’t mention it from the point of stardom. Each one of us has this 15-minute of fame thing in his head. Now it comes easier. Everyone wants to do something. Even Ghalib wouldn’t have wanted his children to while away their lives. The greatest human beings on earth are those who are just too happy being themselves. My wife and sister are like that. Some people can say they are lazy, stupid or boring. But it is greatness to be satisfied being you. Otherwise we are all trained to be someone else. When I say fear of anonymity, it is from the level of scratch, not from the level of the three alphabets SRK. The fear seems stronger in my case, because it will get compounded in the Press. But it exists among all of us.
For film-stars, age is a strong insecurity too. There is always a new one waiting around the block. There was Hrithik Roshan, now there’s Abhishek Bachchan.
For 16 years now, every year, they’ve always proclaimed a new kid, and now not only a new kid, they’ve made me compete with Mr Bachchan. So I’ve only grown. When they compare me to a newcomer, it’s unfair to the actor and disrespectful to me. When they do that with Amitabh Bachchan, it’s an honour.
At the same time, does it irk you that even as you are at the prime of your career, you have to sometimes share the glories and lofty sobriquets hyphenated with Bachchan, who’s been there, done that, had his day, so to say?
I don’t think he has had his day. He is having his day every day. You can’t discount excellence. Let’s believe I’m 60, there is an upstart newcomer, and suddenly they begin to hyphenate my name with his. From that logic, I’ll be quite unhappy too. “Look at me, I’m 65, God of Indian cinema, why am I getting hyphenated with Shah Rukh Khan?” Every Friday now, there is a reason to be unhappy, when the film doesn’t do 150 crore business. But I’m very happy; it’s been 11 years, nobody has crossed Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge. There will be a day when somebody will do it. What I am happy about is that I have been blessed by God, and I’ve never been in a situation to question what can go wrong. I always sit and wonder, what else can go right for me now?
But do you think Bachchan, at 64, has increased the retirement age for a movie-star? It’s never happened before.
When I joined films I remember telling Aziz and my friends that I’m going to be Sean Connery. I have been yearning to play my age since I was 26. At 33, I did Kuch Kuch Hota Hai, which was extremely embarrassing for me. Javed Akhtar admonished me the other day for always shouting my age from the roof-top. “Nobody else does it, why do you do it,” he said. But then, if I am 40, so I am. Yashji says I’ve been getting younger by the day, while he’s writing older characters for me. I am young because I think young. And whenever I feel like retiring will become my retirement age; I’m self-employed. For Amitji, it’s a personal choice. He may be beyond the government’s retirement age, but he is his own government.
Sarkar…
Yes, sarkar, though he calls himself ‘runk’ or ‘praja’. He took five years off, chucked it all and then decided to come back, and he truly enjoys what he does. I sometimes tell him that if I were his age, I would right now just be sitting at home and enjoying myself. I’m saying it now. Maybe you’ll find me on a set 73 years old, and doing better.
Is there anything you hate about your job though?
Nothing.
You’re a smoker and it becomes the Indian health minister’s problem.
If you’ve been in the job that I am in for so long, you begin to realise that your life gets entwined with a lot of people. Not that everyone will begin to smoke because I do. I think that kind of influence occurs only in the case of fashion. But for better or worse, you become an entity, a generic term, a brand name. I have cut down on my smoking a lot. When I had decided to give it up, in New York, the health minister also sent me a nice letter. The only thing I won’t do is lie about my personal life. Many actors don’t want to be photographed holding a cigarette. I will not be hypocritical.
Talking of stardom, how do you quantify movie-stars? It’s easy to do it for a sportsperson.
You can’t. As I always say, only telephones have numbers. But it’s become business now. So whoever gets distributed fast is a saleable star. As far as any other method is concerned, you can’t even compare one actor or performance from the other. I am not a fool to not know when my performance is not good. But that’s the way the director wants it, and that’s the way the cookie crumbles in this film. It’s just that you cannot think that the guy I play on screen is the guy that I am. I am not. When people start mixing that up, is when it starts disturbing me.
Salability of a star also restricts an actor’s range. You’ve always been accused of playing Shah Rukh Khan.
Not complaining. Yes, about five years ago, I realised that the stage I had reached in my career as a commodity, had begun to take away a bit from my creativity. But as MF Husain once told me, while he has corrupted art, I have corrupted films. I will do a one-off, like Swades. I don’t mean Swades is shit, but I can do that shit. I’m a good enough actor now, after 16 years and 53 films; any idiot would be. But the stakes are a little high.
But given the dynamics of a movie industry, it’s the leading man who can push the envelope for cinema. Their support makes all kinds of movies viable to be made, for Hindi films to move to newer levels and newer voices to be heard.
I do that film once a year because every time I do it, it flops and that hurts: Phir Bhi Dil Dai Hindustani, Asoka, Paheli. The only good thing I’ve done is to make sure I don’t put the onus of pushing the envelope on someone else. I am very proud of that. I realise I have to do a Chalte Chalte or a Main Hoon Na, or now an Om Shanti Om, which will get us a review that will say it’s a f*** all film, but will get us a lot of money, so that I can make a Paheli. I have danced at weddings to pay for Phir Bhi… I’m not saying I have done it only for that. I have done it for my BMW too. If you have a great film which is not going to run commercially, if I say yes to it, it will be made. I have that kind of salability, the power of when Shah Rukh Khan says yes. Of course, it won’t sell as much as Kabhi Alvida Na Kehna. Neither will it be touted as Krrish. But it will sell. But are we doing the right thing though? Just because you have an idea, which you think should be made, should we utilise Shah Rukh to mislead people into producing and putting money on it? I don’t think so.
So, I’m not rich from the films I produce, but I want to keep doing them. I have started a VFX studio now, which is expensive and money-intensive. But I’ll do it because I think that is where films should go; which does not mean I’m going to make a Krrish, with all due respect to the makers of the film. I mean special effects where you don’t even know they are special effects. I also cannot watch serious, dark, artistic films.
Give us an example of what you mean by dark and artistic.
I mean when the buzzing sound of the fly is louder than the music. When the dialogue delivery is extensively slow; and you can hear all the honking and traffic sound.
An Aamir (Khan) goes ahead and puts his money in a film like Lagaan, or sees that a point like Rang De Basanti is made. Or Saif (Ali Khan) is now tagged a leading man, and yet you see him in an independent flick like Being Cyrus, or as a crude rustic in Omkara.
Lagaan started with me. The posters were in my house, and on my computer. With Ashutosh (Gowariker), I went to every producer: the Moranis; Ratan Jain; one, Mushir Riyaz… . They used to all make big films. I’m talking about being five years into the film industry, with a friend who hadn’t made successful films. They’d all say, “He is a bad director.” I realised the film could not be made. The first day when Lagaan was being shot, I called up Ashutosh, and told him, “Dude, if you become famous after this film, don’t work with these three people, because they spoke very badly of you. I never told you then, because you were a failure.”
I’ll be very honest; nobody has come and offered me Being Cyrus. Vishal didn’t come to me for Omkara. Amol Palekar had in fact come to meet Rani once. He just told me he wanted to do a film called Duvidha, I said, “Mani Kaul, Duvidha, fantastic, I’ll do it.” I asked him who was producing it, he made some sounds, and I said, “Can I produce it?” And then I did the best I could to meet his wish-list: Ravi (Chandran; cinematographer), Amitji, Rani, Juhi… I can’t go to people to tell them to come to me. But I’ll never do a film to be different. I think that is the worst purpose to do a film.
The ’90s decade, when you began your career, was a turning point for Indian economy and its people, where the rich became richer, and the poor became relatively irrelevant. There is a suggestion that no movie-star or screen image has managed to enchant both rural and urban India at the same time. Do you regret that?
I don’t understand the question.
A film like Kal Ho Na Ho, though a commercial success, will not be identified with people in Purnea, a small town in Bihar. And in fact does not even open there.
You are overlooking an important point here. In the pre-’90s, the method of releasing films was very different from now. Then you began with eight prints of a film, which incidentally, you released only in the few very big cities. If the film did well there, like Hum Aapke Hai Kaun, you got the money and the guts to go deeper into the country. I don’t think people were so rude to say we should now allow poorer people to see the picture too. But that is the way the system moved.
I remember, even till my time, when I was shooting for Trimurti in a village in Mysore, the film that people were screaming and dancing about was Deewana, close to five years after its release. I was at Arunachal Pradesh to shoot for Koyla, and the people had not seen DDLJ, they were watching Baazigar. Yes, India resides in the villages, but not in their pockets. They don’t have what it takes to buy the product at the price we are willing to sell. From Dilip Kumar, Shammi Kapoor, Amitabh Bachchan or now, if you wish to use my name in third person, that’s been the case. Even as we talk of how Amitji played a normal man, you have to realise the normal guy he played in the film wasn’t a ‘ghati’ or someone from Bihar. It was Vijay, an urban anti-establishment character, who took the machine gun, ran into Parliament and shot them all.
Presently, even as subjects are quite urban, there are some rural topics tackled too. You can’t discount an Omkara, or a Lagaan, or a Chahat, for whatever that was worth. But since the reality has shifted more to the cities, we assume that we don’t need to show people as ‘filmi’ anymore. Say, someone who yells, “Arre, ka hua Madan babu, aa gaya hai apna Omi, Omi bhaiya….” But you can still show Shah Rukh Khan taking Rani Mukherjee through the gaons of India in a truck. That is the level of earthiness that we’re at, and it was never so before.
But if we go back to Bimal Roy (Do Bigha Zameen), V Shantaram (Do Aankhein Baarah Haath), or even a film like Raja Harishchandra, there was only rural India then, there were very few cities to begin with. Yet, the concept of the village girl was still an urban perception: innocent, sexy girl, big bosom, low choli… Ramu didn’t introduce bum-shots in cinema. It’s always been there. So it would be a little wrong to say that we were catering to the whole of India, and we’ve stopped doing it now.
I mean the divide. For instance, Salman has a front-bencher, relatively rural audience, whereas you belong to the cities. It gets reflected in the pictures and product endorsements that you both do.
I don’t find you a rural writer; your sensibilities are very urban, and you belong to big cities; so do I. As an actor, it doesn’t work differently for me, and that has to do with the upbringing. Certain subjects, though I am sure they’re good, don’t appeal to me. And that just happens. I don’t make a conscious attempt towards it.
How do you explain being the prime draw among NRIs?
The technical reason is the return of the cinema in the ’90s after VCRs became outdated. We did ‘yuppie’ films that featured English-speaking actors. However, let me also tell you that NRIs are the villagers of India. You meet them and they go, “What you are doing yaar; I don’t know what the f*** is happening, yaar”. They went abroad from Amritsar, Pind; and even now, 90 per cent of NRIs are from the villages of Gujarat’. The South Indians are the only educated people you will find abroad and they are not the greatest audience we have. We have a South Indian film audience but they are not our NRI audience. The bottom-line is that we are again catering to the same people.
How large is Bollywood’s global influence? Is the interest surrounding Bollywood among western audiences an Indian media fantasy?
I completely disagree with the fact that we have made any dent in the western hemisphere. We started off as a fad, as a fashion statement, through henna or Madonna. If you aren’t going to cater to an increase in their valuation of things, you’re not an influence. We don’t even make up one per cent. However, I think we have a little window now. If we can get educated people who understand world business, world-class technology, fashion, film language, and apply all that coupled with the USP of our music, then in the next seven to eight years, ‘Inshallah’, we could become an influence. Right now, we are just outsiders at a party. We are not the guys being introduced to the chief guest.
Would you consider yourself the last of the old-world filmstars, who owns a bungalow that becomes an address in Mumbai; gets anointed ‘King’; usually plays a romantic hero…
People tell me I could be the last of the superstars. It’s nice to hear that. But I don’t think so. I’m sure there won’t be any actor who would buy my bungalow from me; but maybe construct a triplex or a building. I have got a bungalow, because I’m from Delhi, I don’t understand apartments. I always thought people in Mumbai who lived in these apartments were poor. Also, I’m very flamboyant as a person. I’m not very attached to money, so I don’t like getting into calculations; I spend freely, being extravagant in all areas of my life, whether it concerns production or any other aspect. I would like to believe I’m the last superstar, but that would be like believing that I’m going to live forever.
Talking of romantic heroes and romance as it used to be, it seems to be getting passé now, the sorts of Raj-Simran, Prem-Suman…
Not really. I think romance is eternal, romantic heroes are not. That may change, but romance will work. When you try to cut it out completely, it doesn’t work, like Neal and Nikki. I haven’t seen the film, so I’m speaking out of turn. Even when you see Omkara, the part of the film you feel most for is the romance. There need not be teenaged boys and girls. And that’s Shakespeare, and he is lasting till date.
Perhaps your most quoted line is that ‘you can romance a pole’.
Yeah, I can romance anything.
And maybe you do romance a pole. The chemistry between two people is, of course, subjective, but there appears to be little lust, when you’re around a leading lady. Do you feel asexual at work?
I don’t lust after women. Call me pansy, if you may. But no I’m not asexual at all. I’m very sexual. As a matter of fact because I’m so sexual, I don’t lust. I think people who don’t feel sexy from within, are the ones who lust. I’m too sexy to lust. I genuinely believe that I’m a very, very sexy guy, and I don’t refer to poster-boy sexiness. I’m talking about the way I think. I think sexuality is inherent and an intense aspect of my enactment and persona.
After enough has been written about you, you’re writing an autobiography. How have you judged yourself in the book?
I’m not being judgmental about myself in the book. I have written what I wanted to talk about. I was passing through a bad phase once, was depressed about life, and Mahesh Bhatt told me to write. He said it would help. My book is not at all literary.
Given the exposure and importance accorded to a movie-star, you enjoy a huge platform to make a difference. You’re seen as one who has the ears of the ruling Gandhi family, for instance.
My parents often used to say that if we start to look at things we’re good at, and put our feet, mouth and eyes into it, we could make a difference. There’s no point in me talking about India’s space testing programme, when I am never going to know enough about it. I do have access to big businessmen, say, Mr (Laxmi) Mittal and Anil Aggrawal. I don’t know about the Ambanis, but they’ve been very sweet to me. Politicians from either side of the government, Soniaji and Vajpayeeji, they’ve both been sweet. However, when I talk to them, I essentially discuss the state of films. I am a capitalist in my thinking, and expect no favours from anyone.
My son has an Atlas where they use one word to describe every country. It says coffee, against Brazil, and Bollywood against India. The fact that an international publication knows us by Bollywood makes me proud, but then, when I go abroad and see distribution or production technologies, I wonder why all of that can’t be there in India. I am comfortable addressing such issues at FICCI conferences and other such conclaves. I may not be a Narayanamurthy or Azim Premji, but I am supposedly the top guy in my field of work, and so I can talk about it, as against other subjects. There’s an Urdu saying that ‘half a doctor is dangerous to life’.
It is said that Islam gets a bad name because of Muslim fundamentalists. Being a secular Muslim and a popular icon, do you feel that speaking out on the subject may be a good way to redress unfair notions about a people, or influence the fanatical elements within it?
I have been doing that in my own way, more so after 9/11, when misrepresentation of Muslims began in a big way. I’ve started to become more open about my religion — that I am Islamic by birth and I say ‘Inshallah’. Earlier I just called myself secular. I also say that Islam is the most secular religion in the world. Just as a Hindu must say Hinduism is the most secular religion in the world. Once we begin to believe that, there will be no dissent left. My children follow the secularism of both religions. It’s a dangerous practice to see people through coloured, tinted glasses. This discrimination happens everywhere — in politics, art and so on. I stand by M F Hussain, a gem of this country, who means no ill-will to anyone.
I know he isn’t anti-Hindu. And you can interpret anything as anything. Tomorrow you can turn around and say that his horse paintings are anti-Islamic.
There was a time when Yusuf Khan would have to call himself Dilip Kumar to be accepted as a leading man in Hindi films. That’s changed…
That was during the post-partition era, when it was said that India would be a Hindu-dominated country, just as Pakistan was a Muslim-state. We’ve lived through those years and realised that these are not the issues of modern times.
Things have changed with globalisation. Also, inter-cultural, inter-religious and inter-caste marriages take place now. At the same time, even back in those days, people knew that Dilip Kumar was Yusuf Khan. He wasn’t fooling anyone. I haven’t researched to find out why, but every actor was just supposed to be a ‘Kumar’ then!