| INDIA TODAY - The most widely read newsweekly in South Asia. | INDIA TODAY - The most widely read newsweekly in South Asia. | CURRENT ISSUE NOVEMBER 06, 2006 | | | | SOCIETY & THE ARTS: BOOKS |  | | | WORK IN PROGRESS
The lighting is great, the frame perfect, but the book on Shah Rukh Khan could have done with sharper focus | | | By Kaveree Bamzai | | | |  SRK: STILL READING KHAN
BY MUSHTAQ SHEIKH
Om Books International
Price: Rs 2,995; Pages: 448
| What do you write about a man who is such public property? We know what Shah Rukh Khan eats (not much), how much time he spends in the loo (two hours a day we are told), his children's names (Aryan and Suhana), even his zipcode (Mumbai, 400050). What can Mushtaq Sheikh's distractingly designed biography tell us that will enlighten us about a star who is everywhere all at once? As it turns out, once you find a suitable resting place to read this monumental tome, there are many revelations, some of which are as moving as the most shamelessly sentimental Hindi film script. There's a flamboyant father who dies of cancer, a doting mother who dies of septicaemia, an angry young orphan trying to build a dazzling career for himself, marry a Hindu girl against her parents' wishes, and take care of his unwell sister. In between there are some fascinating stories: about his father losing his deposit against Maulana Abul Kalam Azad from Mewat in the 1952 parliamentary elections, his mother once being engaged to cricketer Abbas Ali Baig, his old home in Delhi being turned into a working women's hostel, and of him as a child meeting another superstar, Amitabh Bachchan, while on holiday in actor Mehmood's Bangalore farmhouse. Though the author is somewhat limited by his prose, he manages to capture the struggle of the young Shah Rukh, as well as his supreme confidence, so emblematic of a generation he represents. There are vignettes of him rejecting Vidhu Vinod Chopra's offer that he play Anil Kapoor's driver in 1942: A Love Story and equally politely declining to dub for rising star Salman Khan in Pathar ke Phool. In spite of some glaring errors-Shah Rukh's old theatre friend Sanjoy Roy is irritatingly referred to as Sunjoy Mukherjee throughout the book despite being extremely generous with his reminiscences and Kumar Shahani is carelessly called Kumar Shahanu-the book works as an inspirational hagiography. Sheikh has done a lot of commendable work collecting rare photographs and unusual memories from practically every player in the actor's life. Pity he didn't have a good editor to say cut.
 | | PICTURE SPEAK | |  |  | | LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL: Shah Rukh Khan with wife and children; with his theatre group in Delhi. | | | The star with friends on an early ad shoot. | |
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