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Shahrukh Khan
Autobiography
My mother was born and brought up in Hyderabad. She
was a strong and beautiful woman. She resemble Waheeda Rehman. My father
also was extremely handsome. I don't think I'm good-looking but they were
a very good-looking couple. The met incidentally under strange
circumstances. Injured in a car accident, my mother needed blood. My
father who happened to be at the hospital at that time gave her blood. In
this process of helping my mother to revive, they fell in love.
And though my father was about eleven years older
than my mother, her family consented because he had sort of saved the
family. In bringing up my sister Shehnaz and me, my parents never made any
difference, though I think my sister was closed to my parents because she
is six years older to me. I was born at a time when my parents weren't
doing well financially. But I don't remember facing any hardship on that
account. My father was a chief engineer. My mother was a social worker, a
first class magistrate. She had studied in Oxford. She was among the first
few Muslim women to have achieved so much. She has been an executive
magistrate for the longest tenure recorded. She used to deal with juvenile
delinquents. I was not a stubborn kid.
But if I wanted something badly enough I would go out
and get it. I was exposed to the Ram Leela, I acted in it as one of the
monkey. I wrote short stories.. shairis.. my father made me recite them. I
remember once there was this aunt who wore horrendously pink lipstick and
I composed a corny poem in praise of her lipstick. I think she was
secretly pleased. My parents let me do my own thing, they only wanted me
to do well in my studies...which I did. There were no restrictions. I
could sleep at any time, go out anytime. If I bashed up some child's
teeth, my father saw to it that I dealt with the child's father myself...
I realized that parents weren't authority but they were friends. I would
imitate Mumtaz, I would mimic people. I'm doing all this even today. And
guess what? I'm being paid handsomely for it.
An outgoing kind of person, mom took a lot of
initiative in everything. I remember when my father was ill, he had cancer
for eight months, we lost everything we had. One
injection used to cost about Rs 5000 and we had to organise about 23
injections in ten days. It was an expensive affair and our business went
down. At that time my mother would work day and night. She would get the
money some way. She really looked after my father.
After his death in '81 she revived his business and
ran it proficiently. I inherited workaholism from her. She never said no
to anything. Like when I went to college, I said I wanted a car. And the
next day, there was a car outside. She never forced me to do anything. She
never even forced me to take over the big business that we had finally
when she died.
When I told her I wanted to act, join films she did
not stop me. I wanted to do my masters in film making. I was very good. I
had got admission in NSD. I didn't want to do it but she told me, "just
get admission". So I gave my admission test and got in. I remember I used
to be very bad in Hindi. I would get zero on ten. And she used to tell me,
"If you get ten on ten, I'll take you for a film". And from that day to
date I have topped in Hindi at all times I remember the first film she
took me to see was Dev Anand's Joshilaa. Her favourite actors were
Bishwajeet and Joy Mukherji.
I think I inherited my sense of humour from my
father, who too had a lot of respect for women. I remember once I had gone
and blown somebody's letterbox. And this south indian lady came down and
complained to my father, "Your son troubles my daughter". He looked at her
and said, "If she is as pretty as you are and if I was as young as my son,
I'd probably do the same thing". She started laughing. He said it so
gently and nicely. He was very respectful to women because he had an older
sister and a mother whom he was very close to. He taught me how to be
gentle with women.
When my father died, I didn't cry. I thought it was
heroic. I was one of the pall-bearers, I thought I had become a little big
man. But I felt cheated despite the fact that he had prepared me for his
death... And my mother's death made me realize that nothing is permanent.
I stopped hoping for anything. I cried a lot. Nothing shocks me anymore.
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