BADSHAH , TUMHE KYA NAAM DOON ? CHALO TUMHAARA NAAM IMOHABBAT RAKH DETI HOON.... (Kabhi main Indian Express mein thi , aaj main New Jersey mein hoon) By Ruchi Sharma

If kindness had a name, I’d call it Shah Rukh Khan. In the middle of all the loud and controversial noise about his son… all I could ponder was the state of the father. I’m still trying to figure out if anyone else has had this thought.

For me, it was the first thing that came to mind. Not so much because I’ve heard how attached the man is to his children. Only because of an incident that I will never forget.

It was a hot, muggy day in 1998, and I was a senior enough writer to be assigned an interview with Shah Rukh Khan.

This was, mind you, his heyday. Personally, I had never thought much of the work he’d done so far, even though I believed he had tremendous potential.

But being an over-emotional, hyperactive, sexist stalker hardly commanded respect. I honestly failed to understand the hype.

But this was a sponsored piece of writing, so there was advertising money riding on it. They needed someone to go, and as my boss told me, “Ask him inane questions and make him look like a superstar”.

I hung around waiting for two hours in his trailer at Mehboob Studio before he turned up. The first words out of his mouth were, “I hope you weren’t waiting too long.”

I was genuinely taken aback at the concern. But since he’d been polite, I decided to reciprocate with politeness.

I told him I was going to ask him a bunch of stupid, sponsored questions, though I would have preferred otherwise, and apologized in advance for it.

Regarding me keenly over the spiraling smoke that seemed to emanate from his very being, he said, “Then why do it?” I shrugged. “It’s my job. I don’t have to like it. I just have to do it,” was my oversmart reply. In that second, I thought I was going to be in trouble…

However, he opened up and started asking me all about the job I didn’t seem to like, this wonderful new thing called the world wide web and all things internet, which fascinated him as much as it fascinated me at that point.

The chat continued for a good hour, and I, at least, never realized where time went. Finally, he said “I have to go, so let’s answer your ‘silly questions’.”

We both laughed a bit and got down to the 5-minute job, which he genuinely tried to make interesting.

By the end of the session, I had nothing but admiration for the man. I still didn’t like his work.

But. While saying goodbye, he said, “If you ever want to come and conduct that interview you said you’d actually like to do, please call Anwar. I’ll make sure I see you. You may have to wait, but I’d like to talk.” I could only stare.

In my short, successful and eventful career, I had met all kinds of film stars. No-one had ever been so kind.

A few months later, he launched www.srkworld.com something he called a website for the film industry and announced with great fanfare.

Much to my surprise, I received a personal invitation to go to the press conference at the Taj.

On a whim, I dragged my mother along. She simply loved ‘Shah Rukh’, as she still calls him at 80, and it was her birthday, so I thought she would get a kick out of seeing him.

In the midst of all the frenzy that surrounds a star like him, he waved. My mother was in seventh heaven, naturally.

So on an impulse, I went up to him, waiting by the side to catch his attention. He came over and said, “Hi! You still haven’t got in touch about that interview.”

I smiled back, wondering how to request him to pose for a picture with my mother.

This wasn’t something I had ever done, and I also found it mildly ingratiating and majorly embarrassing.

But he pointed to my beaming mother, asking who she was. Drowning with relief, I said, “That’s my mother. She loves you. And it’s her birthday. So I thought she would like to see you.”

I realize today that it could only have been this man, who then walked across to my mother, and said “Namastey, Aunty. How are you?”

He chatted with her for a few minutes, and beckoned a photographer to take some pictures. All while I stood like a goggling teenager, nary a word coming out of my mouth or into my head…

It has been more than 20 years. My mother still has those pictures, framed and everything. And this remains one of the happiest memories of her life.

I was some fairly unimportant journalist. He was a superstar. It wasn’t as if we were pals.

He didn’t have to do any of the things he did. But he did. It’s an act of warm-hearted kindness one can never really forget or overlook…

Within that context, I look at what is happening with him and his child today. Enough has been said about it all, but I wonder if anyone has wondered as much as I have… what kind of morbid, dark place did this powerful, yet helpless father find himself in? I wonder. And I wonder why…