His Father Was King Khan's Biggest Hero

Ali Peter John

In India, more than anywhere else in the world, there is a very strong belief that the future of a child whether it is a boy or a girl, depends on how he or she is brought up by his or her parents. It is generally the son who is inspired by his father, but in some exceptional cases, it is both the parents who have a significant role to play in the bringing up of their children.

Shah Rukh Khan had the unique privilege of being deeply influenced and inspired by his father, Meer Taj Mohammed Khan, who was an active freedom fighter who taken part in the Khudai Khidmatgar movement inspired by Khan Abdul Gaffar Khan, also known as the Frontier Gandhi. Shah Rukh was too young to know about the kind of work his father and his associates were doing, but he knew that there were very different from all the other fathers and were highly respected in the society.

However, Mr. Meer Mohamned Khan fell on bad days and took to various kinds of businesses, which included running small furniture shops, restaurants and took up other sundry jobs to keep the family going. He was a highly educated man with a post graduate degree and a degree in law, but he did not want to practice as a lawyer. His extremely sensitive nature prevented him from doing anything that could hurt him. He finally took up the offer to run the mess at the National School of Drama in Dehli, where he took his little so, Shah Rukh ( which meant the king of a handsome face ) regularly. It was here that Shah Rukh got his first taste of what good drama and what goos acting was all about, when he saw amazing plays like " Suraj Ka Saatwaan Ghoda ",

 " Tughlaq " and others and met great actors like Raj Babbar, Surekha Sikhri, Ajit Vachhani, Rohini Hattangadi and others, from whom he came to know what great acting was all about. He also had tge opportunity of watching a great guru of acting like Ebraham Alkazi, who showed him how acting could be taught.

He had silently decided that he wanted to be an actor, but did not have the courage to tell his father about it, till his father himself one day asked him what he wanted to do in life and he said, " kuch nahin " and was surprised by his father's calm response when he said, " jo kuch nahin karte, who kamal karte hain ". His father told him only one thing and that was to do what he felt was best for him and that was when Shah Rukh finally decided to be an actor. He was helped by gurus like Barry John, Saeed Mirza and Akthar Mirza and Col. Raj Bharti and Lekh Tandon who gave him work in TV serials, till Hema Malini gave him as a romantic hero in Dil Ashna Hai. His mother who was his very strong support died a year after his father died and he no other way but to leave Dehli for Bombay with only a few hundred rupees in his pocket and a million dreams in his heart and in his head and one night outside the Lucky Restaurant near the Bandra station, he looked up at the sky and screamed, " I will conquer you one day " and that is what he has been doing for more than twenty five years now and there has not been a day when he has forgotten his father or his mother and all that they had taught him about life once.

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Tags: Bollywood, Bollywood News, Bollywood Updates, Television, Telly News, Shah Rukh Khan, King Khan, Badshah, Meer Taj Mohammed Khan