Who better to talk about Shah Rukh Khan than his close friend Mushtaq Shiekh, who does not tire of writing about the superstar.
After giving us a glimpse of the actor in Still Reading Khan, Mushtaq returns with Shah Rukh Can, which makes for a much lighter reading than the first book.
We bring you excerpts from the book.
The Others
What happened was this. In this world of careful cliches and PR-dictates, it was easy to come across encomiums about a much successful star. But somewhere during the interviews conducted for the book, the respondents would tune away from the practiced, well turned-out phrases; a question here or there would initiate a train of thought, they would gain an insight into the star and their relationship with him.
The title of the chapter comes from a movie, The Others, which has Nicole Kidman and... the others. It's a love story and a ghost story. It's about pain, loss, grief and, above all, love. The main character lives in an illusion until she realises that she is but a ghostly guest in the real world.
The Others: this is a metaphor that could be stretched to apply to movie actors and their characters. And this was a title that I thought would fit in well for a chapter where an actor is being discussed by his colleagues, where they state their perception of his art, of his heart, of his life and their expectations.
In the movie, Nicole Kidman (with apologies to those who haven't seen it as yet) and her two children live in a vague world, the unreal aspects emphasised by absence of light, the heavy fogs and utter solitude of the house. She is haunted, she believes, by the Others, the presence of whom she can faintly divine at times or at other times, it is thrust upon her.
Till, of course, in a reality-obliterating climax, she realises that she is the Other, a ghostly remnant of her physical body that had been caught between the planes of the real and the unreal. The movie ends with the Real world moving out, leaving the ghosts in their imaginary world, in the cocoon of the house.
Shah Rukh Can photographs courtesy: Mushtaq Shiekh | Publisher: Om Book International
Excerpted from Shah Rukh Can by Mushtaq Shiekh, published by OM Book International with the publisher's permission, Rs 395.
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