A Lawyer Who Rinced Practiced Law Because He Didnt Know How To Tell A Lie

ALI PETER JOHN

It was a leading Urdu poet who said that a child who buries his mother never smile again. It was another poet who said that a son without the shadow and shade of his father can never be normal again.  It was these who poets who came to my mind this morning when I was thinking about the early days of Shahrukh Khan and how he had lost both his parents when he was very young.

Meer Mohammad Taj Khan was one of the thousands of young freedom fighters from Peshawar now in Pakistan.  Besides being an active freedom fighter, he was also a well educated young man who did his MA and then completed his LLB , but he didnt take up a legal practice because like Shahrukh says he found it very difficult to lie if he had to fight a case in court .He was a scholar who had complete command over several languages like Persian, Prusto, Urdu, Sanskrit, Hindi and English . He couldn't stick in one job and flitted from one job to another wthout meeting with any kind of success because Shahrukh once called him ' the most successful failure he had ultimately started some kind of a canteen outside the gate of the National School of Drama in Delhi, which was also a failure , but it helped the young Shahrukh to meet and interact with some of the great actors, playwrights and directors who sowed the first seed of taking to acting as a profession.

Shahrukhs father gave his children the freedom to follow their own passion. There is this interesting story Shahrukh tells about his father. His father once asked Shahrukh 'kya kar rahe ho? ' and Shahrukh said, ' kuch bhi nahi' . His father smiled and said, ' jo kuch nhi kartey hai, wo kamaal kartey hai" his father died of Cancer when he was only 18 years old and Shahrukh took on the responsibility of taking care of his mother and his only sister , a responsibility he took till even his mother died when she was quite young and it has been one long and endless 'kamaal' in his life which doesn't seem to end.

He maybe the Badshah and King Khan today but there is not a day when he doesnt remember his parents. A month ago, when he was making his massive competition to the fight against Covid 19, he made sure that one of the foundations formed to help was named the 'Meer foundation" after his father

People ask me what it is that makes Shahrukh Khan the Shahrukh Khan he is and I simply say,' love your parents, respect them and never hurt them and success and even the world will come crawling to your feet..