Opinion Why Shah Rukh is so angry

Indian Express is bound to make any SRK fan cringe. The man is angry,and if you hear his side then he had a valid reason for it.

It started sometime last year when he was promoting his ambitious passion project Ra.One. At the music launch,a cheeky reporter asked him about co-star Priyanka Chopra’s absence at the event — she had a friendly cameo in the film. One expected a trademark SRK-styled witty reply but SRK wasn’t in the mood to be funny.

Instead he snapped at the reporter and said: “There’s Sanjay Dutt too in the film and even he hasn’t come. I am glad that Sanjay and Priyanka didn’t come nahin toh unhe tumhare sawaalon se sharminda hona padta (otherwise they would have been embarrassed by your questions)”. Clearly the insinuations in the tabloids about his alleged proximity with Pee Cee had become a touchy topic.

King Khan’s anger surfaced again when Pee Cee was seated next to him at an NDTV show during the promotion of Don 2. This time,the critics were on SRK’s firing radar. Peeved with the negative reviews that greeted Ra.One,SRK growled: “I wish them (the critics) the worst of futures possible. Some of the critics were very personal about my midlife crisis. Why am I doing this? I’m just trying to prove a point. I just want to tell them,go to hell. I’ll do stuff that I want to and I’ll do it all my life because I’ve been doing it for 20 years and I deserve it. If you guys have a problem,come talk to me face to face.”

This year,he opened his account with a brawl with choreographer-director Farah Khan’s husband Shirish Kunder at a Mumbai nightspot. They eventually made up a day later and even announced a film together. The headline hunter in him surfaced again in April,when he was detained at a New York airport when he was on his way to address students at Yale University and receive the prestigious Chubb Fellowship,one of the school’s highest honours,for promoting human ideals and aspirations through art. SRK delivered an impactful speech and made a dig about his detention with a classic SRKism: “Whenever I start feeling too arrogant,I travel to the US”. His critics would argue that in the recent MCA controversy,it was the star’s arrogance that was once again on show.

So what’s really happening with SRK? Is he really having a midlife crisis? Is this his jumping-the-couch-on-Oprah moment a la Tom Cruise? Or is it that the weight of being the amiable superstar for years and years is finally getting to him?

To understand what’s happening with SRK now is to understand how he has navigated his stardom until now. The man who says,“I wear my stardom like a t-shirt and not a tuxedo,” has always been open,funny,proud of his middle class roots and someone who accorded equal respect to the media. Maybe his Jamia Millia mass communication degree has something to do with it,but SRK always made the media and his fans feel like a part of his success story. Boundaries were never really set because he was having fun. But as is the way of the celebrity-obsessed jamboree,the more you give,the more the public wants. Maybe it’s the oversharing that is getting to him. The pressure to match his last superhit with the superhits of the other Khans is getting to him. The constant pressure to play the generous superstar,a role he took upon himself willingly,seems to be the cause of his undoing right now.

His close friends think it’s the showman in him that forgets where to draw a line. One just had to witness his excitement when his IPL cricket team,Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) defeated Delhi Daredevils in the Pune playoff,to see this side of his personality. His team is yet to win the cup,a final is still to be played but did SRK care? No. He’s happy to make an occasion out of it. Indeed,he thrives on it. So he’ll do the victory lap of the stadium without his players. He will do a somersault,he will even show his shoe to fans who jeered his antics. Winning is important to him,as he famously says,“You never win the silver,you only lose the gold.” In SRK’s case,winning has become his life force.

SRK seems to be living a film in his head where he’s the star and the audience. How dare the MCA authorities or his fans come into his field of vision and spoil his frame? He has already issued a warning that he’ll “misbehave properly” if KKR actually do manage to win the IPL. What’ll he do next? We can’t wait. To be continued.

harneet.singh@expressindia.com