When most people discover my penchant for Bollywood, they are somewhat puzzled. I am of African descent; I grew up in Africa and then moved to the United Kingdom and so it is not hard to see how people would wonder about my love for the genre. My responses to queries as to Bollywood’s appeal contain one common characteristic, or more correctly, one common character: Shah Rukh Khan.

For me, Shah Rukh Khan has always been a major part of the Bollywood experience. It is through him that I first grew to love the genre and to appreciate the flamboyance, the freely expressed emotions and the richness that ran through each film.

Undoubtedly one of the busiest actors in Bollywood, Khan has been working in the industry since the late 1980s, starting his career in TV-series, Fauji. He has since starred in over fifty films, tirelessly appearing in at least one project a year since Raju Ban Gaya Gentleman (1992). He is a globally decorated star and performer. He mastered the art of villainy, playing the psychotic, the powerful and the highly unbalanced with perturbing believability. He made hearts soar (and sore) with his portrayals of love in many, if not all of its forms, from the unrequited to the forbidden. His on-screen partnership with Kajol in various films presented the audience with possibly the most dynamic screen couple Bollywood has ever produced. More recently, he shook the highly conservative Bollywood framework with his portrayal of adulterous love in Kabhi Alvida Naa Kehna (2006), which while rather tame by western standards evoked all kinds of criticism on home ground.

It is safe to say that Khan has played and is playing a vital role in the progress and transformation of Bollywood. He is courageous enough to swim against the stream and to use what some would consider failures to improve himself, his ethic being that uniqueness is more important than popularity. To his fans, he is eternally grateful, to his friends, he is loyal, and to his family he is devoted. For one person to balance the spheres of life so well is extraordinary.

But in truth, probably the most extraordinary thing about Shah Rukh Khan is that he has managed to remain so outwardly ordinary. Interviews reveal an exuberant, passionate and amiable individual who has accepted celebrity status and all that accompanies it. He is a man that leads the actors of his generation, brings pride to those in generations before him and influence to those after and yet to come. His work, undoubtedly, is at least in part responsible for the growing popularity of Bollywood. Hard work, perseverance, a little luck and divine intervention may have gotten him where he is, but it is his personality and charisma that will keep him there for a long time to come. Long live King Khan!

By Alyas Nemo

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