Covering Bollywood and the Hindi Cinema

The Indian audiences love Shahrukh Khan and all his romantic films over the year. So lets see what the man thinks about Valentine Days and Romance in general!

What are your Valentine's Day plans?

Too old for Valentine's. It was not fashionable when we were young, by the time it became fashionable I am too old. But I will get my wife a gift.

What are your five most romantic films?

I don't like romance.

You will break a lot of hearts with that statement!

No, I don't like romance in terms of watching them because I do so much of it. You do that, and you keep on watching it also, means you got to be really obsessing about this (laughs). This may sound a little strange, but I don't know.

The kind of films I have liked, Padosan was very romantic though it was a comedy about a teacher wanting to be in love with his student. That was very romantic. I can tell you a great heartbreak was in Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro, where the guy is in love and the woman cheats him and uses them. Among the romantic films I like, let me see, 'Dilwale' is nice. Even though it is a personal film, but it's a nice film, I saw it about three-four months back in Australia, it was nice. Again one of my own, I like Yes Boss, that was very sweet, that's taken from For Love Or For Money.

Among English movies... I thought whackily that There's Something About Mary was good, it was quite sweet, quite romantic, a guy who's in love with his college sweetheart. And there was this book by Graham Greene, A Quiet Affair I think it was, yeah, which Attenborough made it into a film with Julianne Moore, about the woman who says if you bring him back to life, I will give up the thing I love the most, and she has to give him up. That was very romantic. I liked the book a lot, I saw the movie before that, I didn't know it was based on the same book, then I read the book a year ago, and I thought that was very romantic. Is it A Quiet Affair or An Affair to Remember? I will remember...

Tell us your show's plans for Valentine's Day.

We had some fun times with Karan, Farhan-Zoya Akhtar, Arbaaz and Malaika. Different sort of couples, you know, a friend couple, husband-wife couple, brother-sister etc to celebrate the spirit of Valentine's without saying it's just about love. These six people are coming on, sort of standing in for different aspects of loving each other. Friends, brother-sister or husband-wife.

Apart from this they have another three-four celebrity shows, which they will tell me about. They sort of fix it up and request me to extend courtesy and call them, I guess that's the prerogative of the producers whoever they decide on. They make a decision and they tell me to be courteous and call them.

You have absolutely no say in the list?

See, the Valentine's show we had actually decided on 10 people because we wanted it to be like a set of people playing games, and the only say I had was that because it was an hour-long show we extended it a little. If you can get everyone to play, not just two of them to play and the other eight, nine to just sit around... So we broke it down to six, made like Arbaaz-Malaika, it would be good if we had two more couples, That kind of say I have but they create a wish list which they wish to and do the spadework. I guess some of them do not wish to participate for various reasons, dates plus not wanting to. And they only bring to the fore the ones who they feel are wanting to join up.

I have lots of friends like Preity and all who want to go on the show, I tell them look these are my friends who'd like to come on the show. Rani, John wants to come, Bipasha, I tell them these are my friends who wish to come, if it fits into the scheme of things, they are sort of very happy with it.

A lot of young people hesitate to get into inter-communal marriage, on account of various pressures, family, societal etc. As a Muslim married to a Hindu, what is your advice to young lovers?

Well, just marry. We did a film called KANK, which people were sort of slightly disturbed with. But the message was this: you marry only for the sake of love and friendship. You marry because you think he/she is a good person to wake up with, be with. He is my friend or she is my friend, and you know, religion, discipline, communities, mohallas, relatives, and parents, everybody has a viewpoint, but you got to remember that finally it's about your life with someone, and if you think someone is right for you, you need to go ahead and do it.

I think the educated youth of our country and everywhere else, I think communalism and religion and inter-caste is becoming a thing of the past. It is only left as an agenda for politicians now. And you have to remember as a youngster, that even if you intend being a politician, do not make this as your agenda at least for your marriage. Just go ahead and do it.

When I meet youngsters now, I think nobody is really bothered. Like my kids ask me, papa what are we, Hindu? Muslim? We are both na? They are quite happy about it yaar. They know the difference, and the difference makes them realise that there is really no big difference! Because mom and dad both seem to be quite cool, and we like them each. In my house when kids can grow up like this I am sure youngsters, if they grow up with this belief that religion should only be considered as a discipline, and nothing beyond that.

I am Islamic by birth, I follow that religion, that's a discipline. I should do things because it disciplines your life in a certain way. Somehow the things culturally have changed, and you need to grow out of them and accept that change and know that okay, you don't need to be doing this because this happened only five hundred years ago because there was a need for this kind of discipline then, and is no longer required. So you got to read it and understand religion. And if you understand religion you will understand one thing, that there's no problem in inter-caste, inter-communal marriages.

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