‘Shah Rukh, tu smoke kyu karta hai?’: Dev Anand scolded SRK for smoking despite being ‘such a nice boy’; didn’t recognise Gauri Khan

“Dev sahab told him, ‘Shah Rukh yaar, tu kyun smoke karta hai? Tu kitna achha ladka hai. Chhod de, isko chhod de. (Shah Rukh mate, why do you smoke so much? You’re such a nice boy. Just quit this.) So, he smiled and said, “I will try.” He respected Dev sahab a lot,” Churiwala told Vickey Lalwani on his YouTube channel.

He also recalled an instance in London, when he was having coffee with Anand at the café of a five-star hotel. Shah Rukh’s wife Gauri Khan was sitting at the table behind Dev Anand, along with her friend Sussanne Khan. They spotted Dev Anand and began to approach him when Churiwala alerted Anand. The superstar didn’t recognize them, but his friend helped him out with that.

“They came up to him and said, ‘Hello sir!’ ‘Hi Gauri, how are you?’ ‘Arey sir, you identified me!’ ‘Who doesn’t recognize you?’ She immediately called up Shah Rukh and told him she met Dev sahab for the first time, and he knows her by name. He did the same to Sussanne. They jumped with joy. Achha khasa drama ho gaya restaurant mein (Some nice drama happened in the restaurant),” recalled Churiwala.

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Shah Rukh has previously talked about picking a crucial life lesson from his interaction with Anand. In 2018, at the send-off ceremony of the Indian Paralympic contingent participating in the Asian Games, Shah Rukh was asked how he deals with failure. He replied that he’s been working for 10-12 hours every day for 30 years, but doesn’t regret anything even after failing. He chooses to move on to the next project and give his best again.

“I met Dev Anand once and he said, ‘When I see you I feel if you would stop working, you will be finished.’ I think that stayed with me. So, I just do hard work. If a film works, I do not sit on its success and keep showering praises on myself nor do I stop for negative criticism,” Shah Rukh added.