Vishahrukh takes a while responding to my WhatsApp messages. He has been busy shooting the whole night for a TV programme being made on him. The Shah Rukh Khan fan, previously known as Vishal Singh, has been hovering in my universe for almost five years now since I first met him in his Lucknow home, called Shah Rukh Palace. It was the time Happy New Year was round the corner and the exteriors of the ‘palace’ and his two cars had been completely plastered with the film’s posters. Since then there have been upgrades to Dilwale, Fan, Raees and Zero , timed with the films’ release. An SRK temple of sorts, where every inch of space inside is covered with the superstar’s visage, it’s where one of his biggest fans doesn’t just worship but lives and breathes the deity.
The SRK frenzy
The internalisation of the star in his life is complete, to the extent that his son is named Raj Aryan (a combination of the names of SRK’s famous on-screen character and that of his son) and the daughter, Simran (after Kajol’s character in DDLJ ). Every year, he makes several trips to Mumbai — on the star’s birthday on November 2, and on Eid. I’ve been willy nilly made privy to some of the star-centred moments; from the many disappointments of returning from the doors of Mannat without getting the darshan to the elation of finally getting his “ Zero car” autographed .
His overwhelming obsession with SRK has always had me curious even as Vishahrukh himself has come into his own and turned into a celebrity of sorts — certainly in Lucknow and UP, if not the whole of India. Beyond his homeopathy medicines business, called Shah Rukh Force, he has branched out into a film production company called Shah Rukh Force Productions. He has launched a film academy and has written a film called Hum Bhi Shah Rukh that he wants to make soon, in which he has woven in a 30-minute appearance by the star. It is to undo what Fan did — portray both a fan like him and the star himself in a negative light. Will he ever outgrow SRK, I ask him. “ Aakhiri saans ke baad (When I breathe my last),” he says, quickly adding, “ Shayad tab bhi nahin (Maybe not even after that).”
Lata in a tea shop
Vishahrukh is one of several Bollywood-influenced people I’ve met in the course of writing Reel India, a book on off-the-beaten-track cinema stories. Like Suman Chaurasiya, the owner of a small tea shop who runs the Lata Deenanath Mangeshkar Gramophone Record Sangrahalaya, dedicated to, as is evident in the name, the ‘Nightingale of India’. Housed in Chaurasiya’s own home in Pidgambar village in Rau, 14 km from Indore on the highway to Mhow, it’s a priceless archive of Indian music with focus on Lata didi , as he calls her. Most precious in his collection is Lata’s first-ever recorded song and he even has the original songs rendered by her in Sinhalese, Burmese and Malay.
Then there is Farogh Jafri, the writer of several spoofs of Bollywood and Hollywood movies that his hometown, Malegaon, has been famous for. These take-offs, like Malegaon Ke Sholay and Malegaon Ka Superman had been shining symbols of subaltern expression much before TikTok became a thing. In his late 40s, the melancholic yet poetic Jafri, a graduate in English literature, is still struggling to find a foothold for himself as a writer in Bollywood. Somewhere, unwittingly, I have become a confidante about the many vicissitudes in life — lack of money, mother’s death, — and a witness to how the colourful dreams that Bollywood spawns often stay mired in the ugly realities of life.
On the road
With these people I’ve also managed to hit upon some off-the-map places and spaces. Bachkamal, the inveterate writer of ‘song request’ letters to All India Radio’s film music programmes, made me aware of the town Bhatapara in Chhattisgarh. I managed a brush with history at Allan Saheb and Sons, a shop in Lucknow’s Aminabad where legendary music composer Naushad used to repair, tune and play many a harmonium.
There were other highs. Watching Pirates of the Caribbean at Cinemaa 1, the hole in the wall video parlour, the last one standing in McLeodganj. Nothing, however, could beat experiencing the MGR classic, Nadodi Manan , in the centenary year of Delite cinema at Coimbatore with an audience roaring in approval as MGR spoke for the poor and the oppressed. A mix of kitsch and nostalgia, of politics and society. A true blue cinema paradiso where the real joins hands with reel India.
Published by Hachette India, Reel India is now available on amazon.in and in leading bookstores for ₹599.
