Much like Raj, Shah Rukh's main interest in school was sports. St Columba's Boys High School would wind up its scholastic activities by two or three in the afternoon, after which Shah Rukh would head
straight to the practice grounds -- for football, hockey and cricket.I raise my eyebrows. All three? "All three. I was just like what I am now. I could do five things at a time. I am a multi-tasker," he says, lounging in his chair. But which one was he good at? "All three," he says. "And I was the captain, captain of all three."
Shah Rukh notched up several awards in school. He got the Ravi Subramanian Award in Class XII, given to the student with outstanding performance in all 13 years of school. The previous year, he'd been awarded the Sujit Memorial Prize. Unluckily, just the year before he received this award, the Oxford scholarship that went with the prize had been withdrawn.
As a kid, his father would give him permission to go to the Chavva Saab Ki Ram Leela that was performed right behind his home. The performance would go on till two or three in the morning. At times, Shah Rukh would read out his shayari (couplets in Urdu) or participate in the shows -- playing the role of a monkey. At around one or two in the morning, when the Ram Leela troupe took their tea break, a bleary-eyed announcer would come up the stage: "Ab ayega ek chota sa bacha saath saal ka, Sharook, jo aapko thodi si shayari sunayega (And now a young kid of seven will come and recite his poetry)." Shah Rukh would go up on stage recite his shayari, one of which went like this:
Parinde udthe hain main dekhta hoon
Log chalte hain main dekhta hoon
Apne huliye ko dekh kar main rota hoon
Kise kya malum main kin sapnon main khota hoon
(I watch as the birds fly
I watch as the people walk
I watch myself, and cry
Who know what dreams I lose myself in)
Histrionics had been part of him even in his childhood. He'd charmed his chemistry teacher into increasing his grades by telling her that he was like her son. "I also used to feign an attack of epilepsy very often. I'd 'faint' in the classroom and the teachers had to take off their shoes for me to smell. Once, when we had a new teacher, I 'fainted' and the other kids convinced him that if he didn't give me the suede shoes he was wearing, I'd die. He had to roam around barefoot the rest of the day."
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