We Thought Shah Rukh Khan Was Selling Us Love: Turns Out, He Was Showing Us Life |
Every version of me has loved all the Shah Rukhs he has played on screen.
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 | Swetha Ramakrishnan | |
TWO MUMS of five-year-old girls were having coffee one Saturday afternoon, bitching about all the ways life is unfair to middle-aged women. The list happened to be fairly long, but at the top was a discussion on romance. “Let’s face it, Shah Rukh Khan has ruined us for life,” said Mum 1. The other nodded with much resonance. “Real life relationships look nothing like what SRK promised us,” said Mum 2. They both sighed, paid their bill and left. It got me thinking about the lasting impact of Shah Rukh Khan on millennial women (me included). We’re no longer the love-struck teenagers who swooned with him in Kabhi Khushi Kabhi Gham or Kal Ho Na Ho. We’re now perimenopausal women who have to explain to Gen Zs or Gen Alphas why a film like Kabhi Haan Kabhi Naa still lives rent-free in our hearts or why a Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge was housed at Maratha Mandir for over 30 years. When I imagine having to explain the phenomenon that is Shah Rukh Khan to a younger generation, I think of what it means to grow older with him, and how both his films and our feelings have matured — from seeing him as a romantic idol to understanding him as an emotional compass. Your pop culture fix awaits on OTTplay, for only Rs 149 per month. Grab this limited-time offer now! |
It was his 60th birthday on 2nd November, and PVR-INOX is running a film festival in celebration. As an eternal fan, I ended up (very enthusiastically) signing myself up for Kabhi Haan Kabhi Naa, Om Shanti Om, Dil Se and Main Hoon Na. Revisiting them as a 30-something was altogether nerve-wracking, nostalgic and bittersweet. Somewhere between Sunil’s innocence, Amar’s ruin, Ram’s grace, and Om’s rebirth lie different versions of me, and every time I revisit an SRK film, I am reminded of who I was when I first saw it. In that sense, I wasn’t seeing these films in 2025 to witness his evolution, but mine. KABHI HAAN KABHI NAA, and the beauty of not being chosen Sunil, the eternal wooer, in a film that celebrates unrequited devotion. Kabhi Haan Kabhi Naa was my first brush with rejection, so charismatic that it birthed the “SRK as a loverboy” trope. |
Even as a young girl who had negligible interactions with the opposite sex, I knew that Sunil was more obsessed with the idea of Anna than actually being with her. Watching it in 2025 cements this even more strongly. It’s easy to see the film as a warning of being too intensely infatuated by someone who is seemingly out of your league, but there are many ways in which the film also celebrates the joy of not being chosen. Through Sunil's musical prowess and his understated charm, we learn that putting all your eggs into one basket rarely works in your favour. Sometimes you have to give up on Suchitra Krishnamoorthy so a Juhi Chawla can enter your life. DIL SE.., and the dangerous shape of desire There’s no doubt about the ethical evolution of a viewer watching Mani Ratnam’s Dil Se. Amar’s harassment of Meghna would probably be classified as criminal today, but in the 90s, we looked at Shah Rukh Khan’s performance in the film as a textbook case of obsession. A “look-how-much-he-loves-her” justification. Because you can’t help but swoon at his close-ups in the title track. You can’t help but feel goosebumps at his gaze on her, problematic as it is. Before the Kabir Singh discourse hit mainstream Hindi cinema, we were used to seeing leading heroes haunt and hound their leading ladies. It didn’t feel right even then, but the quality of love that Shah Rukh Khan’s character had to offer felt like some kind of balm to his toxicity. Dil Se puts a particular brand of love on a pedestal, one that devours rather than nourishes your soul. ALSO READ | Shah Rukh Khan At 60: The Last Of The Stars |
A current-day rewatch allows me to tone down on the pedestalising of Amar as a character in love. The film's haunting soundtrack doesn’t help, though. 'Satrangi Re' brings me back to every relationship where I mistook emotional turbulence for depth. Amar's self-annihilation (yes, that’s what it is) is a lot more tragic now when I think about it; there’s certainly nothing romantic about harassing a woman into loving you and orchestrating a combined death. MAIN HOON NA and love beyond romance All versions of love that we see in Main Hoon Na are calm and protective, even if they emerge from chaos. Whether it is Ram’s love for his country that brings him to college, or his love for Lakshman/Lucky that keeps him going despite being such a misfit or his love for his step-mother, who becomes a stand-in for an unconditional kind of love, or finally, his love for Miss Chandni that gave way to one of Bollywood’s best romantic tracks of all time, 'Tumse Milke Dil Ka.' |
Main Hoon Na is one of Shah Rukh Khan’s first films, in which the main character isn’t chasing love but quietly upholds it. It marks the transition from passion to compassion, from chaos to composure. The manic love from his earlier characters (Sunil, Amar, Raj, Rahul) has now ebbed into a soft, stable, dutiful love. While watching Main Hoon Na again, I was taken aback by the stillness on display. This isn’t the SRK who ran after his heroines through mustard fields, but one who stayed and protected. And maybe that’s what growing older is: the slow art of learning to stay. OM SHANTI OM and the meta age of love By the time Om Shanti Om released in 2007, Shah Rukh Khan wasn’t just a superstar; he was the superstar. He was playing himself in a film that turned his superstardom into both a spectacle and a satire. The dialogues, the music, the six-pack — they’re all iconic parts of the film, but what struck me the most during this rewatch was how Shah Rukh is in on the joke. A pure legacy-building exercise. After decades of playing characters destroyed and engulfed by love, here he plays a man who quite literally is reborn from the flames. WATCH | Top 5 Shah Rukh Khan films on OTTplay Premium |
The evolution from taking SRK’s romantic idealism at face value to loving him for becoming a caricature of himself has been magnificent. The messaging in Om Shanti Om is clear for an SRK fan like myself: survival isn’t about running away from the fire but walking through it with your arms wide open. ** When I think of the two women in the cafe now, I want to tell them that Shah Rukh Khan didn’t ruin our idea of love. He gave us a language for the changing landscape of love. His movies aged with us, peeling away the high of newness, leading to sustained, tender romance. When we think of love, we no longer think of holding onto a lover’s hand on a train or violins playing in the background as they walk in front of you in slow motion. That’s the textbook, a belief system. Now, we wait for lovers to text us back, and daydream about SRK’s brand of cinema that emboldened our irrational expectations. Shah Rukh Khan’s filmography has ripened over time, gathering the weight of all the people we were when we watched them, and all the people we’ve been since. |
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