He has played this role in many films. And as the DDLJ team comes back to the screen this December, Shah Rukh Khan, by turns brash and self-effacing, tells us that lover-boy Raj grew up long ago
The signs that you’re in a superstar’s home are everywhere. In the study, the awards are displayed proudly on the shelves. Matte-finish publicity stills of his forthcoming production, Billu Barber, are lying on a side table. Biographies and autobiographies of James Dean, Jack Nicholson, Guru Dutt, Dev Anand, Michael Jackson and Peter Sellers jostle with classics like The Fountainhead, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, The Colour Purple and Animal Farm. Shah Rukh Khan owns the entire collection of Tom Robbins, Haruki Murakami and Mirza Ghalib. There are three books on learning to play the guitar; on the coffee table is a book on the origins of Shaolin Kung Fu. His PowerBook G4 is lying on the sofa next to him. Daughter Suhana has just told her daddy that since it’s a holiday the next day, both Aryan and she will sleep at five o’ clock in the morning. Movie and board game marathon plans are already in place.

But right now, all his attention is focused on next month’s Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi that teams him with DDLJ director Aditya Chopra after eight years. To cynics, Rab Ne… might appear yet another love story from the house of chiffons (read Yash Raj Films). But when you consider that DDLJ, the first film of the Adi-and-SRK combo, is 683 weeks not out, and playing at the famous Maratha Mandir in Mumbai, December’s release assumes significance. (That’s 13 years plus for DDLJ, by the way.) Since it’s also Khan’s first release in over a year, you can’t be surprised by the buzz around it.
Quiz him on the gap and the superstar replies, “I don’t like it at all. I’ve only two beliefs: a) I’m a genius and b) a genius is only a genius if he’s prolific.”
That vintage SRK-ism over, the actor tells us how two of his proposed projects, Robot and 3 Idiots, fell through. “Because the makers threw me out of the films and chose to do them with other actors,” he got unexpected time off. “Eventually it worked out fine since Adi was ready with Rab Ne… and I had the time to start it at once,” he says.

... contd.