Janaki Vishwanathan on why the goat in ‘Yeh Hai Bakrapur’ is named Shah Rukh

Honestly, it was not an easy search — we must’ve auditioned 400 plus goats, and I felt that for a social political satire like Yeh Hai Bakrapur, a name like Shah Rukh would make more sense. I included it in the film because it suits the many undercurrents and subtleties of the film.

As luck would have it, we ended up with a goat called Shah Rukh in real life, and we found him barely two days before the shoot. I was panicking as the shoot was on our heads and we hadn’t finalised the goat. It was in Bidar (Karnataka), that I came across Shah Rukh, and it was a eureka moment. When one writes a script, one has a particular character and a star in one’s mind, and if not that then a general idea of the face that suits the role. For us, Shah Rukh the goat fit that description. He suited all my pre-requisites for the bakra — he was a goat with personality, with attitude, an interesting looking intelligent guy — I got all this and more.

We bargained with the owner and when we bought him, he was already a year old and called Shah Rukh. So we retained the name, otherwise it would have resulted in a lot of confusion on the sets. A human actor can respond to different names, but with an animal it would’ve been tricky. Yeh Hai Bakrapur’s stars are an eight-year-old kid and his goat, so this was an easy and difficult film to make. One can reason with adults, but with children and animals, one has to be affectionate, caring and work around them.

The goat already recognised himself as Shah Rukh, and responded to that name. And since he is in every frame and scene, it was imperative that we retain the original initials. Also, Shah Rukh means face of the king, and this goat is shown to have special powers in the film. He loved munching on the veggies and chapatis on the sets, had his own spot boy, car and wardrobe. Now that the shoot is over, he is at a special animal farm outside Chennai.