Stardom has nothing to do with looking like Shah Rukh Khan. It has everything to do with feeling like Shah Rukh Khan. Every star has it. That self-awareness of what he has that others don’t. A self-awareness that must never become self-obsession or the actor will become a caricature. In the 20 years that we have watched him has his awareness turned into obsession? And for us, has the thin line between knowing just enough and knowing too much about him been breached?
When the country saw him doing cartwheels during the victory ceremony of the IPL tournament, talking endlessly, turning what was a team event into a moment of personal vindication, what did we feel? Happy for him? Embarrassed for him? Just perplexed? Wasn’t this the same Shah Rukh who came into the industry as a counterpoint to stardom? The man without a famous father or a godfather? A talent that looked and sounded unconventional and promised that though he wanted stardom, he would get there his way? Not by playing by the rules but breaking them? Did stardom get the better of him?
Over the last few years we have seen Shah Rukh do things that we never thought he would do. Get into public squabbles with peers as well as strangers. We have seen him dunking crores in a vanity project without a heart. We have seen him in controversies that have compromised his public image. What have these 20 years in the glare of spotlight done to him as a person? There is still time to figure that one out and maybe only he can answer that question but if we look back at his journey as an actor, we can see why he was just right for the time he first began to be noticed. It was the 80s, and he was so unlike the staid, conservative actors one was used to watching on Indian television.
Fauji was possibly the first Indian TV series directed at the youth and there was Shah Rukh Khan, bouncing across the small screen like a fireball, hair all over the place, irreverent, a lovable ham with big, melting eyes and a smile that the college-going population could not get enough of. This was not a role designed for instant popularity. In fact rumour has it that the role was increased because of the rapturous feedback.
Never before had a televison actor achieved instant stardom or a heartthrob status. A bigger role in Circus followed along with brief ones in Doosra Kewal and Sanjha Chulha. Close ties with Aziz Mirza brought him to Mumbai where he began to work in a mixed bunch of films driven by the hunger to do something more with his talent and to achieve a stardom not many had tasted post a phenomenon called Amitabh Bachchan. He had a visible spark that could burst into a forest fire and was just waiting for the right amount of breeze and one saw elements of an almost insane intensity in his earlier films like Maya Memsaab (1993), Oh Darling! Yeh Hai India (1995) and Deewana (1992). The spark exploded in films like Darr (1993), where in a scene that summed up his character, he screams his head off in a forest or in Baazigar (1993) where he played a disturbed sociopath. There was so much movement, restlessness and anger in his performances that you felt exhausted just looking at him. His primal scream in Darr is still painted on the back of autos and trucks and is one of the milestone moments of his career. But something shifted around and within him during Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge (1995) where the bad boy eventually turned out to be good and the energy was tamed from a rebel who broke all conventions to a rebel who respected and upheld them.
This was interesting territory to occupy. For someone so unconventional and intense, it would have taken some amount of work to round off the edges and soothe raw emotiveness to fit into sanitised family entertainers and love stories. In film after film, he began to be cast as the ideal male India wanted to see after the angry young man. Someone who sang, danced and hopped through life whether it said haan or naa, who survived heartbreak and tragedy without losing his sense of humour. He was now the romantic who embraced the sunshine and all of life in a signature posture. Instead of the wild-eyed stranger with dark secrets, he became a family confidante, a best friend, a chivalrous lover. Out went the oversized jackets and scruffy jeans and instead we saw him dressed in suits and designer brands. The actor now became a brand as he endorsed everything from hair oil to fairness creams, colas, cars, toothpastes and more.
We knew what motivated him and his performances. The need to have more, to be more. Do more. Today we don’t know just what motivates him to get up every morning in that larger than life mansion he owns at Bandra Bandstand. When he cracks jokes at award ceremonies and during stage appearances and they fall flat, or when he talks compulsively like he did during the IPL final, we wonder where the earnest, articulate young actor has gone who always seemed eager to prove the world wrong about what you needed to make it big. From an actor who wanted to do it his way, he is now a market force, trying to please everyone from advertisers, distributors and critics to overseas audience, domestic audience, journalists. Is it any wonder that the cracks have begun to show? Maybe he just needs to remember where he began. And not just how far he has come. Maybe, the next phase of his success is not about struggling to retain what he has achieved but remembering the boy he was before he achieved dizzying stardom. The outsider with an edge and not a tycoon with an empire. Not a brand spreading itself thin trying to remind itself of its own success.
(Reema Moudgil is the author of Perfect Eight, editor of unboxedwriters.com and an RJ.)