Whether you’re a Shah Rukh Khan fan or not, there’s a good chance you know everything there is to know about him. You’d know how he came from virtually nothing and managed to build a larger-than-life brand for himself that remains solid despite changing trends. You would also be familiar with how his real-life love story seems as if it was written by a romance novelist prone to using the most clichéd tropes.
This is why, perhaps, the recently released book by Mohar Basu on the actor immediately inspires the question: Who is it for?
The prologue of the book takes care of that right off the bat.
Shah Rukh Khan: Legend, Icon, Star by Mohar Basu transports us to the days leading up to the release of Pathaan (2023). The pandemic had wreaked havoc on the business of theatres across the country and it was widely believed that the box office as we know it has been changed irrevocably in the post-COVID reality. This was until Shah Rukh Khan proved that his life has, in fact, been written like a classic movie. The release of Pathaan had everything going against it. Shah Rukh Khan had essentially been on hiatus since 2018, following a spate of critical and box-office failures. The movie had also managed to anger fringe groups, leading to calls of boycott ringing across Twittersphere (or Xsphere if you’re not a purist). The actor, himself, had been through enormous personal upheaval and had made the choice of not promoting the movie through traditional means of interviews with the media or obligatory appearances on reality shows. Despite all the odds stacked against it, Pathaan broke all previously held box office records by raking in over ₹1,000 crores and announced to the world that Shah Rukh Khan was back.
For anyone who has been a fan of the star, this felt like a personal win. It would be prudent to mention at this point that I’m one of those fans myself. I carry a photocard of the actor inside the clear cover encasing my phone, the wallpaper of which is a collage of scene grabs from Veer Zaara. For the longest time, my ringtone was the opening notes of Chaiyya Chaiyya from Dil Se. Visiting Mannat, Shah Rukh Khan’s home in Mumbai, was an invariable item on my itinerary during visits to the city. For me, and thousands of other fans like me, the feeling of seeing Shah Rukh Khan do what he does best onscreen, and being rewarded for it after years of setbacks, felt indescribable. Mohar Basu, clearly a fellow fan, manages to capture that euphoric feeling on paper through her words in the first few pages of the book, making it clear that this book is for anyone who has been swept up in the myth of Shah Rukh Khan, who is, as he puts it, the last of the stars.
The entertainment journalist chronicles Shah Rukh Khan’s journey from his childhood to where he stands through interviews of people from across the world who come under the diverse umbrella of his fanbase. There’s the “realistic and measured fan” from Singapore, the blogger from San Francisco who got a chance to speak to the actor when he was on his Temptations tour in 2004, or even the author’s mother Ellora Basu who claims that her love for the star dates back to the '80s. These personal accounts are interspersed with titbits about his life sourced from the various interviews he has given in the past and testimonials from people closest to him.
At first glance, the book might seem poised to appeal to fans like yours truly. Or it could be considered, as a reviewer on Goodreads succinctly puts it, a “glorified puff piece” for those eluded by his transcendent charm. Ultimately it all depends on what you’re hoping to take away from the book. For the former, the book is a celebration of the actor and everything that has gone behind the scenes of his staggering success. It does a stand-up job of demystifying what it is about him that actually appeals to his legions of fans and attempts to answer just why he is, in fact, the last of the stars. For the latter, it’s at least a fun read that gives surprising insight into the changing trends that influenced Indian cinema over the years. In either case, it’s an engaging read.
‘Shah Rukh Khan: Legend, Icon, Star’ by Mohar Basu (published by HarperCollins India) is available on Amazon and all local booksellers.