Exclusive: Being Shah Rukh Khan

Anuradha SenGupta: I can't believe this — no hot line dialing, no celebrity guest and here I am on the set of KBC with SRK.

Shah Rukh Khan: We are good to everyone, even news channels.

Anuradha SenGupta: I want to know exactly how good will you get, are you ready for a role reversal?

Shah Rukh Khan: I'm all right, I'm an actor. Whatever role you tell me to do, I'll try and do it to the best of my ability.

Anuradha SenGupta: So, let me live a dream role and play the hostess. There are no lifelines, some multiple choice questions and some essay type questions. The first question — Larry Page and Sergey Brin are the founders of Amazon, Rediff, Google or Yahoo?

Shah Rukh Khan: Is it Amazon?

Anuradha SenGupta: I'll give you a lifeline. You have 50:50. I'm getting rid of Amazon and Yahoo.

Shah Rukh Khan: Then Google.

Anuradha SenGupta: Okay then, this game has started. Shah Rukh is doing KBC because — it's a chance to connect one-on-one with fans; he's glad to be on TV, where he started and so and he's come a full circle; for the money or because 'where AB goes, SRK follows'.

Shah Rukh Khan: Three of the above. I think the money is nice and it gives me a chance to be in touch with the people. I also like the quizzing bit and yes, it gives me a chance to be back on the television too.

Anuradha SenGupta: I saw you hug one of the contestants, I think it was during episode one. For me, that fleeting and yet emotional contact seemed to symbolise what a star or an entertainer manages to do for a fan or a faceless person.

Shah Rukh Khan: The simplest aspect of it is that I'm a pathan and that's how I meet everyone—men and women. I don't like the word fans because it's sort of presumptuous that everybody likes you. But I meet audience and whether they like me or not, I do tend to hug people. In movies, I can't be hugging the villain — it wouldn't look right — so, one plays the character. In real life, I'm like that and when I meet real people, I don't do it with the intention that 'if I do this, it'll be nice'. I hug because I feel good.

Anuradha SenGupta: In your stage shows abroad, you have made it a point and you insist that there is a one-on-one contact with somebody in that huge sea of faces.

Shah Rukh Khan: It used to be like that, but now that I have done a lot of international tours, it's a thing that people look forward to. So, the people who are designing the show tell me that we have to have a one-on-one interaction. We try to use the songs which are not really meant for dancing and which cannot be used in the items itself, but they are very popular like tujhe dekha toh yeh jaana sanam or kal ho na ho. You can't really dance to them on stage, so you include them as a part of this interaction. You make the people dance, so it is easier for them to move along with it. We have this interactive bit where I can chat with them, meet with them, give them a hug, get to know about them and make them feel like a star for that show, which is the whole concept of KBC also.

Anuradha SenGupta: I see you answering a whole lot of questions on TV these days. You were on Koffee with Karan lately and you are here now, how do you insulate yourself from all these demands that are being made on you?

Shah Rukh Khan: Obviously, I not doing it very well, because of the fact that I'm on television and answering these questions. Like the concept of this show goes — unless, there are questions, there are no answers. So, if you didn't want to ask me so much, I wouldn't be giving so many answers.

But it seems that over the last few many years, there are a lot of things that people want to ask me and I'm ready to give an answer if it is professionally involved, if it is to do with friends like Karan who wanted me to come on Koffee with Karan.

So, if I have people or the media asking me questions, it helps me gain when I need to publicise some work of mine and I do not deny that. It helps you gain when you are trying to make interesting talk because movie stars are something that people like to watch.

Anuradha SenGupta: You've said at some point that in the early days, when you started out in Mumbai, you went through tough times. You said at one point that ‘I'm going to own this city one day’. Today, when you are in a situation when you can say, 'yes, I do own this city' — in whatever way you interpret owning a city — do you feel that without that hunger, it is really difficult to come to where you are?

Shah Rukh Khan: Yeah, there are a few things that I'd like to tell youngsters, because I tell that to my kids and in a nice way without stressing it or stressing them out. I think it is important for one to be hungry for knowledge, for work, for excellence in one's profession, if one is young. I think hunger is an important aspect in life. The second most important aspect in life is that one should think of losing as not being an option because there are going to be forces that make you lose very often. But if you start believing in your mind that losing is not an option, at least you can delay the losing.

It is inevitable because finally you lose life. It is inevitable that you will ever be able to win over life, you can't. But you may be able to delay it a bit by thinking like that. I said I'd like to own Mumbai and I said it in a very good way because I didn't have a house here and I was sleeping on the roads. But by the time I realised I could own Mumbai, I realised that life takes a full circle and that Mumbai owns me. It's not the other way round any more and it's not important. Priorities, thoughts and beliefs change and there is no contradiction. A lot of people turn around and say 'you are so contradictory', but then, that's the way life is. I find it very strange when people say 'you are always contradicting yourself'. Yes, I think one thing one day and I believe one thing the other.

Anuradha SenGupta: Is that because at the end of the day, we are all work in progress?

Shah Rukh Khan: Yes, we are all fluid, we are all turning into other beings. We are — from the age of five to whatever life span we have — always in transition, we are changing, we are metamorphosing. We are always in a state of change. We are more organic, to use a more pseudo term. You have to keep changing. You'll find new things to say, do and different things will work for you.

Anuradha SenGupta: Would you say that the hunger is a bit less if you get things a bit easy? For example, will your kids not have the kind of hunger that you had to succeed?

Shah Rukh Khan: This is a little hypothetical, but may be, yes they will be a little less hungry than I was. I think the disadvantage of having everything in life is that you don't realise how nice life can be when you achieve it and find things that you did not have. May be it's even nicer that you have everything and continue having it. I wouldn't know that.

Without sounding pompous, the kind of status I have achieved in the last 15-20 years — hoarding screaming out from every nook and corner of the city and a brand name of XYZ — I just pray that my children get out of the shadow of this image as quickly as possible. And if they can't get out, at least they are not affected adversely by the fact that I happen to be a famous movie star.

It is a strange thing to say but I hope my children respect, love and understand me more than the image that I have created of myself. As much as may like them to be middle class kids like I was, it will be difficult to attain. I think in sense of education, in training them in sports and just about thoughts, I can control it and the only way to control it for any parent is to try and spend as they can with the kids.

Anuradha SenGupta: Your parents gave you good education and a great set of values. Would you say that that's exactly what you came armed with or qualified with?

Shah Rukh Khan: I think I got a good set of values from my dad and my mom, who were an educated couple, both working people and both with a great sense of humour. So, that helped and of course the fact that they didn't stay long enough with me. Then I had to stand up on my feet and somewhere down the line; I think that helped as sad as it may sound. But I don't want to give that kind of a help to my kids. I want to make sure that I give them good education; good values and I live with them so that they get sick of me.

Anuradha SenGupta: Now, a multiple choice question. Two weeks into KBC, SRK believes that TV ratings — don't matter, can get it wrong, are slow to get started or can be cracked?

Shah Rukh Khan: I am not from this business to be really honest. As close as this business is to my film business, genuinely, for the past 17 years, I have never looked at the collections of my films. These are things that are not in my control and I don't think I have a right to comment on them because I am not a trade analyst.

I do not even understand the trade analysts sometimes because it is a big analysis to do. I don't know if television is more scientific and can be contained and understood. But in film business, I've never really bothered about the business of films. Even in my own company, I will never know how much business is done, I will never talk about it.

I wouldn't like to talk about television either because I have even less knowledge about it here. I've been told that the TRPs are awful, I've been told that the TRPs are picking up, I've been told that they are steady now and I've even been told that we are the leading show on television right now.

Anuradha SenGupta: For someone who doesn't know about the business, you keep tabs of how it is going.

Shah Rukh Khan: It's difficult to avoid knowing with so many news channels including yours. The whole day and night they are telling you about it. You switch on the television and they are telling you everything—the saazish and the XYZ. Kaun Banega Crorepati is even in the newspapers and their headlines, which is amazing because if it makes it to the headlines, it means it is an important show.

Anuradha SenGupta: You must be relishing the attention that you get.

Shah Rukh Khan: No, I don't know whether it is 23.5 million or 11.7 or 27, I know and I can feel it for I have worked long enough in the business of entertainment to know when something works. I can see it on the faces of 500 people who come here, I can see it on the faces of the contestants and I can even see it on the faces of the people who are watching television at home.

At least in my house and my friends' house, I can hear it from people. I also know that may be the numbers are not as good as X expects, strangely the numbers for star are fantastic and for all the other people, they don't seem so fantastic.

So, the people who are doing the business are happy with it and somewhere outside the people felt that it is not nice. Now, I am told that it has steadied and it is all nice. I've read in the papers again that it is very, very good and it'll be good for some time.

May be it'll get bad again, but this is a job that we've all chosen to do — Siddharth, Sameer and myself. We'll see through making sure that we don't slip on the entertainment aspect. I have a great time, which I think is quite apparent in the way I conduct the show.

Anuradha SenGupta: You're a softie on the show? I can sense that when a guy feels uncertain, which means that he might get it wrong, I can see you almost willing him without telling him.

Shah Rukh Khan: I believe in telepathy and I think it really works. There was a guy who I really liked and who was very intelligent. He was doing very well on the show and he came to a question where he thought it was not going to happen. I started thinking and I putting it to his mind that this is the answer. I wanted him to get the right answer.

I want everyone to win from here. Apart from being a super star here, I feel they should win some money and they should feel proud of their achievements. They are hungry, as some of them have tried for years to make it here. I would like them to go back with the feeling that having the hunger for knowledge and success has its benefits when you come to KBC. I should go out of here thinking — life well spent because I got to meet so may people and I am very emotional about that part.

I am, if you want to call it that. I have been tough all my life, but yes, I am a softie when it comes to KBC.

Anuradha SenGupta: You will be remembered as a man who epitomised love for a generation. Isn't it? Like Dev Anand?

Shah Rukh Khan: Yeah, I hit softly with my songs.

Anuradha SenGupta: This thing you do with your eyes, you call it 'sweet eyes'?

Shah Rukh Khan: Some people tell me 'you've got sleepy dog eyes'.

Anuradha SenGupta: Since you are very much into gaming, here's a multiple choice question about games. Which of these games is not available on Playstation 3 — Grand Turismo, Motor Storm, Metal Gear Solid 4 or Gears of War?

Shah Rukh Khan: Gears of War

Anuradha SenGupta: Gears of War is not available on PS 3.

Shah Rukh Khan: I wouldn't know much about PS 3.

Anuradha SenGupta: But, I read an interview in which you said that 'come November and I will be buying myself a PS 3 or my son is going to buy it'.

Shah Rukh Khan: Yes, I got it but I've playing this game (PS 2) more than that (PS 3) one. I've been dying to finish this season now to go and get on to PS 3.

Anuradha SenGupta: What is it that gets you going with gaming?

Shah Rukh Khan: The only time that I'm able to utilise all the nervous energy that I have — with my hands, eyes, movement, sound — is when I'm playing a game. Once I get on to that, all the faculties of nervousness, all the manifestations — twitches and hand movements, screaming and shouting — all gets focussed into one thing and I enjoy it. I find it a nicer way to read and play games than just faffing around.

Anuradha SenGupta: Is it true that during the shoot of Don, you got almost everybody into a gaming room? Did you win?

Shah Rukh Khan: Me and Ritesh Sidhwani won from Farhan, Priyanka and Boman Irani. Of course, they will claim otherwise when you speak with them. We beat them and got the world cup, but we were nice enough to give it to them.

I was there for a month and a half and we got shields and got them embossed. We even got bracelets for each team and opposite teams did not speak nicely to each other even on the sets — bumped them, hit them and behaved badly.

Anuradha SenGupta: Which are the films that you are working on? Currently, the focus is so much on television and KBC...

Shah Rukh Khan: Chak De India is over, we finished that before we started KBC. October we have a release called Om Shanti Om, which is shooting simultaneously with KBC, just down the road and we'll be through with it Inshahallah by May. But we'll hold on to it because we want Chak De to come first and after that Om Shanti Om.

Even time wise and visibility as an actor, it is nicer to have KBC, which will go on till end of March or mid of April and then move on to a film that comes in July-August and then a film in October. So, in terms of space of watching me, it's still like watching three films or may be a little more than that because I am on KBC everyday.

Anuradha SenGupta: What you have today, does that make you superstitious? My sense is that when the stakes are high, for people across industries and across sectors and for people in general, they tend to believe that something beyond themselves will keep it going?

Shah Rukh Khan: No, I am not superstitious at all. People tell me and I have been subjected to it because people in the family believe it and I respect it. You'll see it even in The Inner World, there are a lot of things that I do.

Feng Shui and Vastu is done for the house for my house by my family and I respect that like I respect all religions because these are all disciplines and there is some sort of a theory behind them — unproven or proven.

If somebody tells me to do it, I will do it, but on my own, I’ve never been superstitious. I truly believe what I have, a lot of it is undeserving and there is only one being that I can thank that for — my mother's prayers and God. I don't know how Allah will be, what he will be like...

Anuradha SenGupta: He could be she you know...

Shah Rukh Khan: It could be she and I don't even know if it will be a personification of this being or will it just be a power or will it be a light. But I know, what I have is beyond what I deserve. I know that very clearly and I don't feel guilty about it but I feel that I need to thank God and thank the audience.

With due respect to everyone who follows these things, I'm not thanking stones, I'm not doing that cause it takes away the importance from the person who's given me all this.

Anuradha SenGupta: You know what you have to do if you want this interview to end...

Shah Rukh Khan: You tell me.

Anuradha SenGupta: It's the rule of KBC

Shah Rukh Khan: I want to go home with Rs 2 crore, so please give me the check. I'd like to take a hug from you.

Anuradha SenGupta: That's what I was waiting for, thank you Shah Rukh Khan for this interview and all the best for everything that you do.

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