Men don’t find it manly to jump into a tub and talk about ‘the secret behind their beauty’, as the Lux punchline goes. Aastha Saxena, a real estate broker in Mumbai, says, ‘I don’t get why men are so horridly insecure of their manliness. The one time I suggested to my boyfriend that he join me in the tub, he said he would rather watch football. Somehow, a man in a tub becomes about their sexuality. Shah Rukh himself was deemed girly after this commercial. I hate the fact that men can’t openly pamper themselves till date. Imagine what a dismal life it is that men can’t allow themselves a day of sipping some wine, covered in bubbles and listening to nice jazz music.’
Shah Rukh is aware of his sex appeal. ‘I’m too sexy to lust. I think people who don’t feel sexy from within are the ones who lust. I genuinely believe that I am a very, very sexy guy,’ he said in a 2006 interview. And in true global superstar style, this sex appeal of Shah Rukh goes beyond borders. Maedhbh Keating-Fitzpatrick, an Irish woman who lives in London, first discovered Bollywood when Salman Khan and Katrina Kaif were shooting in Trinity College, Dublin, for a song sequence in Ek Tha Tiger. This led her to watch a Shah Rukh Khan film—and there was no going back.
I was charmed. My friend Jameela took it upon herself to show me more movies and they were all 90s Shah Rukh Khan ones. I started watching them, and I love them. I have watched DDLJ, Dilwale, K3G, Kuch Kuch Hota Hai and Jab Tak Hai Jaan. I have watched the Don movies. I still have a few left, but the ones with Kajol are lovely. I have liked other movies of other actors, so one would wonder why him, or what about him.
What makes me put on a movie in a language I don’t know, with subtitles, to see this man? Women appreciate kindness and sweetness. Traditionally masculine guys can’t show softness as beautifully. When I watch him, that’s what I pick up. Men are patriarchal—they are rough and tough. He is a man who feels like an ally. Mothers feel like he is a guy they could have raised. There is a willingness to be vulnerable, and the ability to be silly. He feels like an ally even though his movies could be dated today.
He is the man who is willing to be in your quarter. Most people in my life don’t know Shah Rukh, but he is the face they recognise because he is massively popular. But what sets apart his love from anyone else’s is that he is one of us and is absolutely okay with that. But what’s the most amazing part is that despite being considered such a sexy man, the emotion women feel for him is not that of just lust. Rehana Khan (name changed), a shopkeeper I met in the main market of Aqaba in Jordan, got talking about Shah Rukh when she heard I was from India.
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The same morning, a group of boat owners at the Aqaba bay played ‘Bole Chudiyaan’ from K3G for me and my friend when they found out that we were Indians. In my experience while travelling internationally, Shah Rukh is a great conversation starter. In Germany they discovered Shah Rukh after the release of K3G in 2006 and then he shot Don there. An article about his global appeal in the BBC quoted a staff from a movie theatre, who said, ‘If you are talking about Bollywood in Germany, you are talking about Shah Rukh Khan.’
And often Shah Rukh is a great way to get handsome discounts. Like Rehana gave me after our chat. She asked me if I had ever met Shah Rukh. I told her I had. She said she wanted to meet him someday. ‘You know, we women never look at Shah Rukh and say, “Oh I want to sleep with him.” Women are built differently, I believe. We love him. And by love, I mean I want to have a conversation with him for an hour—ask him how he is feeling, what bothered him that day.
It’s not lust. He evokes pure love. So when I see him with his wife, I feel very happy. He is so adorable with his daughter,’ she said. Would you believe that as one of the most loved male superstars in the world, he has actually never had a woman make a pass at him? ‘Women love me! I am sure they do, and I love them back. I think somewhere there’s a line, the way I am, it has never crossed anybody’s mind to really propose to me. I think only my wife got stuck. I’ve never had a woman make a pass at me. Unfortunately. And I am too shy to make a pass at a woman.’
He said that despite his on-screen persona as a romantic hero, he has always struggled with romantic interactions in real life. Although he has many female friends and enjoys spending time with their children, he has never been comfortable initiating romantic or flirtatious conversations, and nor has he ever received such advances from women.
‘I play with their kids. But I’ve never been able to go up to a woman and say anything to her … nice, kind, romantic, interesting, wild, or, you know, sexy. And I’ve never had women do the same to me either.’ He gets the same respect from his female fans that he gives them. This one time, a user on Twitter asked him tips on wooing women. He shut them down, saying, ‘Start with not using the word “Patana” for a girl. Try with more gentleness and respect.’
This excerpt from Mohar Basu’s ‘Shah Rukh Khan’ has been published with permission from HarperCollins India.