The answer to the title is a resounding no. I'll love Shah Rukh Khan until my dying day. But Shah Rukh Khan, the actor?
It's been a week since I watched Shah Rukh Khan's Jab Harry Met Sejal. Almost all the work Shah Rukh has done in the last few years has been disappointing. So much so that I've been hurt, I've been angry, I've screamed at friends who have said stuff about those movies, only in my need to defend shah rukh - little knowing that I too was very slowly but surely getting disenchanted with what he was doing onscreen. Offscreen he continued to be witty and charming - but an actor is defined by his craft - a craft at which Shah Rukh had been steadily failing since his antics in Ra.One. With every release I'd wait until tickets opened for advance booking and walk into halls anxiously, trying to keep my expectations low - but I've never been good at that with Shah Rukh. And each time I would come out of the hall dreading the onslaught on social media for how horrendous the movie was and how a star was riding on his ill-claimed success in the 90s. I would hang my head in shame, until the next movie was due to come out - where I would again paint the world red with my hopes and dreams on the Shah Rukh I knew finally coming back. Although Dear Zindagi was not his movie - he oozed wisdom, charm and skill in the few scenes he had been gifted with. It also helped that he was playing his age and maybe it wasn't a love story ? I was also very impressed with Fan and Raaes, here was Shah Rukh trying to do something different, taking a chance - too chance that both those chances didn't pay off - he was great in both those movies - the movies themselves were not spectacular for multiple reasons, but he held the movies together. So naturally, when Jab Harry Met Sejal was announced to release on August 4, I was ecstatic - he was returning to the genre of romance and with a director like Imtiaz Ali and after stronger performances in the previous three movies I've mentioned.
My post now ceases to be about Shah Rukh. This is now about Imtiaz Ali - a film maker I love. A Filmmaker who has brilliantly tackled the angst of the 20s - an age of complicated emotions additional encumbered by life decisions around career, finances, morals, societal obligations to name a few. Love stories that are more than just love stories, that are set in the background of the India I grew up in and can relate to - of lifestyle and life choices I have made. Everything from Socha Na Tha to Jab We Met to Love Aaj Kal, Rocktsar, Highway, Cocktail - all movies I that have left me feeling complete as a film goer and as a human being and as a girl in her early and late 20s. His movies are the kinds I want to watch alone because I don't want to dilute my experience of watching the movie by dissecting it the minute I get out of the theatre. They are movies I want to hold onto for a little while longer even after they are gone - almost like you don't want to turn the last page of a book because the book has been so good and such a companion that you are unwilling and almost afraid to let it go. I'm almost vulnerable after watching some of those movies - Love Aaj Kal, Cocktail, Highway, Rockstar and Tamasha all these have left me a little raw. Especially Tamasha - Tamasha was everything i was, everything i wanted to be, everything I needed to learn, every emotion i have been exposed to in those i have loved and wild emotions I have felt in the run of life so far, every decision I have grappled with - every ache, every longing, every disappointment, every inch of the frustration Ved felt, the depth of Tara's belief and sense of loss - I have felt it all. I am sure many of us have. But that movie awakened me to some of my own madness, made me tug at little tighter at the shackles around my wrists. Tamasha made me fall in love with my dreams all over again. It made me acutely aware of the dual life I am leading, of this dual being that I am. AR Rahman's magic in each and every track - and his voice in Tu Koi Aur Hain - are the very essence of hindi film music - not to miss Irshad Kamil's lyrics - they make you go through the emotion exactly the way Ved or Tara are portraying it in the movie. Tu Koi Aur Hain is literally the background of my life post 25 followed very closely by Agar Tum Saath Ho. Tamasha for me was the magic of love, the pressures of holding onto a "secure" job, the need to be independent in a career that other look up to with some amount of respect, the circle of financial slavitude that keeps one under the illusion that they have the freedom of letting go, with the knowledge that that option doesn't truly exist in your bag of choices. The crazy duality that you show yourself in bathrooms and in the safety of your own homes - that other dual being that hides away in corporate layers, in social connections even, in the friendships we have - where everyone knows a certain version of you - a version that only you truly know is actually only half of you. The other half speaks to your entire self in front of a mirror. Your own special kind of crazy. I can go on about Tamasha and I probably will in some posts in the future - that movies was just something else for me. I weeped in my seat - weeped is truly the right choice of words - because after a certain point i was hiccuping. But I made the mistake of going with 10 other people - none of whom understood the movie - that was the day i told myself I won't be booking anything ever again for a group larger than 5. I should have gone back and watched Tamasha on the big screen again, just for myself. But I've watched it multiple times since then on TV and it has always left me feeling overwhelmed and simply full in terms of the emotions I am experiencing . It's so sad that Tamasha didn't do well. It was a little too abstract for most people and it was also a story that many didn't identify with - for few of us realise the duality we are living day in and day out. OR maybe I'm the only crazy here who does that?
With that expectation in my mind - I went to watch Jab Harry Met Sejal - Imtiaz's next with Shah Rukh Khan. It is the first time, I have come back home from a Shah Rukh Khan movie and cried in a corner of my house - because I have never felt so betrayed by the story, acting, music, Europe, Shah Rukh and most of all Imtiaz Ali. The movie lacked a soul - it was hollow - empty - and in that emptiness, I could hear screams of my own anguish and already, the laughter of everyone else around me. Thankfully I had gone for this movie alone, half expecting a situation like this. But I so wanted to love this movie, I so wanted to fall back in love with Shah Rukh and I so wanted Imtiaz Ali to tell me a story about myself - some facet that existed within me that I was hitherto not introduced to - but I walked out of the theater feeling so incomplete, that as soon as I reached home, I allowed myself one big cry.
You've let me down Shah Rukh Khan. I still love you and I always will - but i too now truly wonder if this is something you will ever re-emerge from. And Imtiaz Ali - you'll bounce back - there are a million stories you need to write - even if you are accused of all of them sounding and looking the same - you will recreate magic - because there is too much of it left in you for be squashed after jab harry met sejal - which was not even an attempt at a story. But Shah Rukh....
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