Zero Is Going To Take Shah Rukh To The Next Level

I share a very special bonding with Aanand  Rai . It didn’t start  with Tanu Weds Manu where Aanand’s success  story starts. Most filmland friendships begin at the  signpost of  success. I’ve known and believed  in Aanand from the time he directed his first film a small thriller called Strangers.

Before I got  to know Aanand I knew his elder brother Rajiv Rai, who is  a very talented director. Rajiv changed  the  course  of  Indian television with his long-running serialRaahen. But he  could never make  that  transition from the  big to small screen.

Funny, how  success smiles on some and  spurns  others. So we have  Ayushmann as the starKhurrana(you simply have to hear what he  is charging these days) while his  more talented brother Aparshakti is  what is known as a ‘charcter actor’.

 But we are straying. This is  about Aanand and our special bonding . Success has come to him  in  no time at all. Having directed  and produced some remarkable  films he has  now embarked on a journey about three misfits  played  by three  of  the  biggest  stars  ofBollywood. It  is unimaginable to see Shah Rukh Khan drop  his vanity and knock off at least two feet from  his height .

What would  his fans say?  Would they  love him less because there  is less of him to love?And what would Anushka Sharma’s fans say about her being confined to a wheelchair?  The  bewitching Katrina Kaif who has never been allowed to  go beyond her physicality  is  cast as an alcoholic  actress.

 These are  messed up lives, which no  filmmaker  would want to touch  unless he is lit  by the fire of  an  all-consuming passion. Aanand and Shah Rukh have discovered two such wandering spirits in one  another.  Shah Rukh is at stage in his career when he has nothing left  to prove. And he  wants  to prove that he has  nothing left to prove.

And  why must daring only be the domain  of Aamir Khan? I think somewhere Shah Rukhhas taken up the challenge of dropping the alleged vanity  of a star to the ground. I have a feeling Shah Rukh’s  Babuaa will rank as  his career’s best performance, not because he is out to prove how daring  he can be, not because he wants to win  a National award(he might,thought, I can tell you that) but because  the  view from Ground Zero is exhilarating , provided  you can see  the wideopen sky from between the  bustling bodies of  a tall but aimless humanity.

In Maneesh Sharma’s Fan Shah Rukh  played his own  fan.In  Zero he will stop admiring himself completely. Because life is too short.And not  in  the way it was always meant to be.