He is a feeling, and feelings don’t age: Mohar Basu on Shah Rukh Khan turning 60

Pic/Satej Shinde

I don't remember the first time I saw Shah Rukh Khan on screen. I somehow always knew him. It's perhaps because my mother adores him. A lot of my knowledge about him comes from her and perhaps the love, too, is something I inherited. She had told me stories about how he was delightful to watch on TV in shows like Doosra Keval, Circus and Fauji. I have come to understand that her reason to love him is rather simple. Many women of her generation saw Shah Rukh as the antidote to the Angry Young Man. As a woman of her own mind, I don't think she takes well to anger in men. Yes, Salim-Javed designed the angry young man as a vigilante standing up against a system and an establishment designed to disadvantage the common man. But very early on, clones of angry-young-man in films that lacked the nuance of its original creators, began looking like polite versions of Sandeep Reddy Vanga's Animal. It makes sense, thus, that SRK appealed to her and many women of that time. He is charming on screen, says the right things, articulate, well-read, respectful to women, gentle and his philosophy aligns with the psychological wiring of people who were done with unabashed testosterone-laden stories on screens.

But these are the reasons why my mother, who is 68, likes Shah Rukh Khan. It's baffling how many of the same reasons stand true for me too. It tells me two things - Love for SRK cuts across age groups and the more things, the more they remain the same for women.

SRK was always my inspiration. No, I never wanted to become an actor. I am exactly who I always wanted to be - a writer and a journalist. But even when I was eight years old, I believed that if you work hard, your dreams will come true. There were many examples of this for my generation, but most parents would say - look at Shah Rukh Khan. And I did. In 2013, when I first moved to Mumbai, my friend Pratishtha Malhotra and I would spend many days sipping coffee and working out of a coffee shop under SRK's office. After 14 years in this industry, do I fully realise the impossibility of what SRK did as a 25-year-old. Having sat through an obnoxious number of laughable LinkedIn posts from entrepreneurs giving long spiels on "building from scratch" and "hustle", I think we can all look at the case study of a man who made us believe dreams come true.

As Vir Das said in an interview to Hasan Minhaj recently, "I think what encapsulates him is he showed up in Mumbai with one suitcase from Delhi, looked out at the sea and said, I'm going to be the king of this city. And then did. And bought the house by the sea and he makes you believe it could happen for you too. But at the end of the day, even if it doesn't, you're just glad it happened for him. I think that's Shah Rukh Khan."

At 35, I realise the most fascinating thing about Shah Rukh Khan is that he appeals to everyone who has ever watched his films. Take for instance, Meadhbh F, an Irish woman who was introduced to Bollywood because of a shoot that took place in her campus in Dublin. Her Brit-Pakistani friend said, "Oh you should watch a Bollywood romance". And today, there's only a handful of SRK's films she hasn't gotten around to watching.

When I called her again for this column, she said Shah Rukh Khan is charming, curious, self-aware, slightly self-deprecating, dignified and eternally modern. And that's why even young people still like him. Her younger sister is the newest entrant to the SRK fan tribe. "Gen Z, with all their cynicism and media literacy, can sniff out manufactured myths in three seconds flat. They are exhausted by performative masculinity. They don't buy the faux humility, the ‘alpha male' posturing disguised as an ‘equalist' (Whatever that means). They want sincerity, intelligence, humour, softness and a little swagger. Exactly what SRK has always embodied," she tells me over a call. What he represented in the '90s for women seeking tenderness in a testosterone-laden world, he represents today for a generation seeking humanity in a hyper-capitalist, hyper-online culture.

If you grew up in the last decade, you have seen what public shaming and media trials can do to a man and his family. You've seen cynicism and cruelty masquerading as national pride. And you saw Shah Rukh hold his head high, even as he spoke rarely. When he returned to the screen with fire in his veins and a grace which most of us might not be capable of in face of adversity, you knew why this man has been our hero for over three decades now. You cannot ever dim a star that is destined to burn bright.

There is a reason his fans felt personal victory in those opening-day celebrations of Pathaan and Jawan. It was vindication. It was a reminder that goodness and grace are not outdated values. They're simply quiet until someone like Shah Rukh makes them roar. And mostly, hate can never be triumphant.

And maybe that is his real relevance. The dreams he sold my generation, of ambition but with ethics in place, of loving with respect, of success without cruelty, aren't outdated at all. In a world obsessed with speed and shortcuts, venom and vile, he remains the original long game.

Sometimes I think the true proof of his legacy is not his films, but the sentence I have heard often - "I want to meet Shah Rukh Khan once in my life." Not "I want to see him", not "I want to take a photo with him", but meet him.

There are bigger action stars, shinier celebrities, maybe even more technically gifted actors. But very few people in public life make you believe in goodness without sounding naive. At 60, Shah Rukh Khan isn't ageing. What he means to us has only deepened. He has outlived trends, rivalries, cynicism cycles, political mood swings, algorithm shifts, and the rise and fall of every platform. He is a feeling and feelings don't age.

You can call him a legend, a star, an icon, but the truth is that some stars shine bright for themselves. But he makes people believe they can shine too. And maybe that's why my mother loved him. And why I do. And why, I suspect, another generation will too.