When Shah Rukh Khan’s father-in-law RC Chibba made rare comments about him on TV: ‘Badi mushkil se hota hai…’

RC Chibba responded with a sher (couplet) by Allama Iqbal, and said, “Hazaron saal nargis apni be-nuri pe roti hai, badi mushkil se hota hai chaman mein dida-var paida,” which basically means that Shah Rukh is one in a million. Shah Rukh was visibly moved by his father-in-law’s words, as the crowd clapped. RC Chibba passed away in 2016, and Shah Rukh was present at the funeral in Delhi.

Shah Rukh and Gauri first met in 1984, and tied the knot in 1991, just as he was making his first steps in Bollywood. They have three children — daughter Suhana, and sons Aryan and AbRam. Shah Rukh has admitted in several interviews that he was a very possessive boyfriend, and at one point, Gauri left him and went to Mumbai. Shah Rukh chased after her, and as luck would have it, spotted her at the beach on his first day in the city.

In a chat with Preity Zinta, Shah Rukh said, “I found her, I told her, let’s get married. She refused even then, she was quite hard-hearted. A year later, my mother died so she felt sorry for me. So she said let’s get married. She didn’t want me to be an actor. So I said okay let’s marry. My producers said not to marry, ‘Bachelor hero ki fan following zyada hoti hai’, but I said, ‘Mushkil se pataya, shaadi karni padegi’.”

Shah Rukh said that he overcompensated at their wedding by asking lots of questions to the pandit, because he didn’t want it to seem like he wasn’t taking the rituals seriously. He told Farida Jalal in an interview, “Once they started the ceremony, I kept asking questions and so a 45-minute ceremony became 2 hours and everyone said don’t take it so seriously.” He said, “The lesson in all of this was that one respects religion, but it should not come in the way of love.”