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.

About Rab Ne…and his equation with the powers that be at Yash Raj Films, Khan says the secret of their glittering track record (Darr, DDLJ, Dil Toh Pagal Hai, Mohabbatein, Veer-Zaara and Chak De! India) is that they don’t question each other. “Somewhere Adi, Yashji and I have stopped working together. Whenever we decide to have fun together, we decide to make a film. I don’t think we’ve ever done a special shot or anything. We don’t impress, depress or question each other. There is seamlessness in this relationship which comes across on screen,” he says.

So when Adi decided to make Rab Ne…’s character an antithesis of their trademark protagonist, Khan was more than happy. “Like I told Adi, I’ve sold Raj’s exterior in so many films but now I’ll show his interior. In Rab Ne…, I’m showing you the machinery of Raj. For every Raj that you’ve seen and loved, whether he wears a leather jacket, rides a Harley or plays the violin, the inside of Raj is Surinder Sahni, my character in Rab Ne…, who is completely normal and nothing like a yuppie hero,” he says.

Khan is ambivalent towards his career-defining roles that have earned him sobriquets like eternal loverboy or king of romance. “I’m ok with Raj. I liked him earlier. I think he’s got older now. I can play Raj as a hockey coach or as Don. I can take him to any level,” he declares.

Brace your heart for more illusions to be broken. For all his romantic intensity and palat moments, Khan hates romantic films. “Neither do I like to watch romantic films nor do I like to act in them but like they say, what you dislike doing the most, you’ll keep doing the most,” he says. He also nixes the notion that he’s romantic off screen. “I’m none of what I do on screen and I’m all of it. I might have all the feelings of Tujhe dekha toh yeh jaana sanam but I won’t express it in a song to Gauri. That’s why I say that I’m a good actor because I’m not like this at all in real life. It takes a lot of shit to do all this,” he says.

Lest you term his move away from Raj as reinvention, Khan gets into self-deprecating mode. “I don’t understand the term ‘reinvention.’ The word invention by its definition means something new. I don’t know how to do new new? It’s either new or not new. Everything that is new for you is already old for someone else,” he says.

So he views his forthcoming films—a special effects sci-fi film Ra.1, Don 2 and the Karan Johar-directed My Name Is Khan where he plays a person afflicted with Asperger’s syndrome (a kind of autism characterised by difficulties in social interaction, limited repetitive patterns of behavior and clumsiness)—as a new experience for him but not necessarily for the viewers. “I’ll be the same Shah Rukh Khan in all my films,” he says.

Is that a dig at all those who accuse him of doing the same stuff in all his films? Declaring that “if they knew what acting was, then they’d be SRK,” he mocks all the words used by critics to describe great acting. “Show me one face that can express words like ‘internalised’, ‘quiet’, ‘underplayed’ or ‘resilient’ and I’ll change my name. The fact is that you can’t express acting, you can only feel it. I don’t have one expression for acting to prove that I’m a great actor. I’ve millions of expressions,” he huffs.
In the space that he’s currently in, it’s the simple aspects of acting that give him a high. “I’m no longer turned on by a 60 ft jump. These days I like the simple details like how my Rab Ne… character, Surinder, washes dishes or eats toast with a big noise.”

He doesn’t believe that he’s King Khan but admits that he likes “the smartness behind the alliteration.” As he sees it, you can call him Kangal Khan and he’ll be the same because “I’m much below King Khan and I’m much beyond King Khan.” 

For somebody who seems so secure in his space it’s disconcerting to see this rising wave of ‘Everybody Says I Hate SRK’ in the industry. The famous spat with Salman Khan apart, Khan has fought off digs from Aamir Khan (who claimed to have a dog named Shah Rukh), Amitabh Bachchan (in his blog, he mentioned how his Unforgettable shows were being sabotaged by a top star) and Akshay Kumar (who said that negative stories are being circulated by insecure people whom he’d never Knight (Khan’s IPL team was Kolkata Knight Riders). Quiz the actor on this and he says, “The reason everybody is making digs at me is because I allow them to. If I want I can wipe off their smiles. See, the thing is that when you don’t understand things, the first instance is to make fun of it. Maybe all these people don’t understand me.” But does he get disturbed by this negative wave? “The more fun people make about me, the more negative and untrue things they say about me, the more resolute I get,” he says. To all his fighting friends, he says, “I invite them to pray to Allah that they get one day to be me and experience what I have. Maybe then they’ll realise how amazing it is to be here. And this I say with no ego.”

His guard down, Khan says that the only moments of sanity in his life are the 20 minutes he spends on the terrace of his sea-facing house. “I thank Allah for all that he has given me. I talk to three stars in the sky that represent my mom, my dad and my dog, Chewbecca, and I ask them if they can see me and my beautiful family. If not, then I’ll make a taller house. These 20 minutes nobody can take away from me. Rest all is work.”