WHEN SHAH RUKH GOT REAL ON SCREEN...

On the actor’s 60th birthday, we discover that he put a bit of himself into so many of the character he lived in reel life

- Roshmila Bhattacharya

For Shah Rukh Khan a film is not just an adventure in a make-believe world, it is a life lived. The story doesn't end after two hours of screen time, he carries it in his head, and carries the characters in his heart, imagines Pardes’s Arjun and Ganga, stolid and responsible, have a couple of kids, he takes her to the movies occasionally, but is usually busy with recordings. Slowly, sedately, they slip into middle age instead of careening into it like Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge’s Raj and Simran who, growing old together, are still having a lot of fun.

Dad like his own in Kuch Kuch Hota Hai

These were some of the scenarios we discussed, one afternoon in the late '90s, when Mumbai was inundated with off-season showers, but Shah Rukh was sitting pretty on top of the world, with Karan Johar’s Kuch Kuch Hota Hai, breaking box-office records. He played a father for the first time in this film, a 30-year-old single dad with a precocious eight-year-old daughter.