Soft serve

His untimely disappearance from the big screen nine years ago may have caused serious heartburn, but Imran Khan is ready to pick up where he left off-with a few upgrades.

- SADAF SHAIKH.

The year was 2008. I was 15 and coasting on a high from placing among my school’s top rankers in the 10th standard board exams. As a treat, I was allowed to watch a movie unchaperoned with my friends for the first time. I was pretty tepid about a coming-of-age movie starring a bunch of newcomers, but as the credits rolled I looked at my friend incredulously. Had the sensitive and steadfast Jai Singh Rathore stirred the same intense emotions in her as he had in me? “Imran Khan is so cute,” she said with a smile. Not in the same wheelhouse, then. Jaane Tu… Ya Jaane Na became my Roman Empire and I was doomed to spend my early adulthood searching for my Jai, only to end up with red-flag Sushants masquerading as soft boys.

Sixteen years later, when the star walks into the studio we’re shooting at, I am once again the teenage girl singing along to ‘Kabhi Kabhi Aditi’ and insisting her boyfriend wear white tees under his flannel shirts. The actor is charmingly awkward as we take him through the day’s schedule—after all, it has been almost a decade since he last appeared in front of the camera. He had intended to keep it that way, he swears, but his self-imposed mental health sabbatical was overturned when fans began clamouring for his comeback in the comments section of Zeenat Aman’s Instagram post.

Khan is aware that his enduring popularity is a remarkable anomaly. “It boggles my mind because I have spent the better part of a decade tearing down and denying any vestige of fame,” he confesses. “Someone told me that they grew up in an abusive environment and my films made them feel safe. That’s a powerful thing.”