HI WHY BICEPS?

BISWADEEP GHOSH

Everyone is talking about SRK, including SRK himself.

Whether or not Aamir Khan likes it, people are talking about him because of, yes, SRK.

Even Salman Khan has an opinion about SRK, and not on his movies!

The last time I saw SRK was quite sometime ago: we were flying back to Mumbai, the city where I worked. Shah Rukh had grown his ponytail because his “hairdresser had taken leave” (that is what he had told me in a typically funny mode). Being the sort of writer who has always believed that stars are celluloid cut-outs who walk out of a screen, and melt inside it, I chatted with him for about half an hour while knowing what he was. The time being merely few months after my book on him had been published, my concern (naturally!) was that he hadn’t liked a few things that had been said about him. It was an unauthorised biography – the sort of book one must write if one wishes to call a spade, a spade – but SRK spoke about it quite positively. Very positively, as a matter of fact, which was good.

Although time has flown, I distinctly remember how SRK looked then. And, today, while being in Pune, I can see the way he does. The moment he makes an appearance, with his new set of rippling muscles, he makes me think of Hrithik Roshan, Salman Khan…you know, guys whose physiques have propelled them to fame. Even though SRK’s Build Himself initiative might have convinced many guys his age that they, too, can do the same, the new SRK does not look what he ought to. The biceps have changed the focus of concentration and, since that has happened, he suddenly seems to have become someone else. He is simply not the guy whose smile and wit piloted him to the top. Even when he had grown his ponytail, his USP – that of being that extraordinary regular guy – hadn’t abandoned him. (One television channel has been going on and on about how he has copied Amitabh Bachchan’s look in Cheeni Kum. What rubbish! SRK had that look well before Balki had started the film).

But, the new look. As someone who has followed his career very closely, I sincerely believe that this look will not work even if Om Shanti Om does, and will. The attention will shift from his natural charisma and, the moment the masses watch a film in which SRK isn’t SRK at all, chances are they will end up watching the movie without liking the guy. OSO has to work – and I said that before – but how the new look can appeal is a riddle no SRK fan would wish to solve. For, the only answer isn’t a great one. And, who wants to think of it?

Will SRK manage to come out of a low if the masses don’t take to his new look? You bet he will. He has done it a million times before, and with unimaginable success. While saying this, I sincerely hope he is back to being Raj Malhotra. And, I hope, so do others.