That Boy From The Ridge

Big B and SRK started at the bottom, in secondary roles in low-budget films. They had no godfathers and rose to the top of the heap on talent and hard work. You can’t help but like them. Numerous books have been written on Big B. It’s now SRK’s turn and this one is the mother of all books. It has over 400 poster-size pages. The dust jacket alone carries 23 frames of our hero.

I have no idea what the title of the book, Still Reading Khan, means but it contains everything you would ever want to know about the man, and a little more. Shahrukh grew up in Delhi’s modest Rajinder Nagar while wife Gauri comes from the upmarket Panchsheel Park. He was a middle-level student at St Columba’s, scoring 80.5 per cent in the finals. He wanted to join St Stephen’s but ended up in Hansraj College down the road. He was part of the theatre group run by Barry John who thought he was better suited to cinema.

Mushtaq Shiekh tells us that the actor spends two hours every morning in the toilet. The bowels are not problematic; it just gives him more time to himself. One can relate to that. We are told that when his father left the family home in Peshawar, he walked all the way to Delhi. He met Shahrukh’s mother when he rescued her from a car accident and then donated blood at the hospital to save her life. It can’t get more Hindi filmi than that! According to this book, the mother was previously engaged to Abbas Ali Baig. My cricketer friend assures me he never met her.

Take this book with large helpings of salt. There are tributes to the actor from friends like Karan Johar which are embarrassingly flattering. You will find long passages on films that were hits and not a word on those that turned out stinkers and disappeared without trace. But there are some very nice photographs.

It is what the trade calls a vanity publication. There is no price tag, a sure indicator that this is a PR job meant for distribution at Diwali in place of nuts and raisins. Don’t try reading this one in bed. It weighs a ton and you will break your back trying to lift it. Leave it on the coffee table where it belongs. We will have to wait for another author to come up with a more reliable portrait, warts and all, of this phenomenal man.