4 min readMumbaiJun 22, 2026 12:15 PM IST
Shah Rukh Khan delivered one of the most profitable careers of his career three years ago at the box office. Two of his three releases — Siddharth Anand’s spy thriller Pathaan and Atlee’s Jawan — emerged as blockbusters both in India and worldwide. Despite enjoying sustained superstardom over the past 30 years, Shah Rukh is also known for his humility, having not forgotten his humble beginnings in Delhi. Now, veteran actor Pankaj Kapur has revealed another insight about Shah Rukh’s humble childhood in the capital city.
What Pankaj Kapur said
While recalling his time as a student at National School of Drama (NSD), Delhi back in the mid-1970s, Pankaj revealed that a very young Shah Rukh would take care of his fellow stage performers’ refreshments during the interval of the plays. “Those samosas were supplied by no other than Shah Rukh Khan. He was a little boy, 10 years old at that time,” said the actor.
Pankaj remembers the 10-year-old Shah Rukh as standing in the NSD canteen. “I think his uncle or father used to run the canteen at that time,” the actor said on a podcast on Kindle Cast’s YouTube channel. Little did he know that he’d go on to play a supporting role in Rajiv Mehra’s 1995 action thriller Ram Jaane, headlined by that 10-year-old boy who would grow up to be a Bollywood superstar.
Shah Rukh Khan’s NSD connection
Shah Rukh’s father Mir Taj Mohammed Khan was a restaurateur in Delhi, where he owned the popular outlet Khatir. After his father died in 1981, his mother Lateef Fatima Khan would run the restaurant, until her death in 1990. While their primary business was Khatir, located in Safdarjung, Shah Rukh revealed that his father spent most of his time running the mess at NSD.
He’d visit NSD after school and wait for his sister Shehnaz Lalarukh Khan for two hours every day before going home together. “I was a very cute child and my entire childhood was spent there in the laps and roaming around with arguably India’s finest actors,” Shah Rukh told the Times of India in 2014.
These actors included not only Pankaj Kapur, who graduated in 1976, but also his batchmate Raghubir Yadav, seniors Raj Babbar (1975), his future wife Nadira Babbar (1971), Naseeruddin Shah (1971), Rohini Hattangadi (1974), and his juniors like Anupam Kher (1978), most of whom worked with Shah Rukh in films a couple of decades later.
“I have watched all their plays and rehearsals for months. I have only grown up wanting to be an actor growing up watching these actors. I may not meet them now, but they have taught me how to act,” said Shah Rukh. He had special fondness for Raj Babbar, whom he used to refer to as “Babbar sher uncle”. Raj Babbar, who would later star with Shah Rukh in Ketan Mehta’s 1993 mystery film Maya Memsaab, would teach him “some of the greatest” plays like Suraj Ka Satvan Ghoda, Razia Sultana, and Tughlaq.
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“I remember watching Raghu bhai (Raghubir Yadav), who was the junior most then, singing the Ganpati puja during rehearsals,” recalled Shah Rukh. Later, when he joined the Theatre Action Group under the tutelage of his mentor Barry John, along with Manoj Bajpayee, Raghubir and other NSD actors “used to help with our syntax and enunciation when we were doing theatre in Delhi”.
Shah Rukh Khan and Pankaj Kapur in Ram Jaane.