I like doing the light fun listicles in the countdown, but ultimately my Shahrukh fandom is fun listicles but also something a lot deeper. And I know this is a safe space to express that.
The year I turned 30 was one of the hardest of my life. It was the year of the 2016 election in America, if you were following the blog then you know how hard that was for me (as it was for most Americans). It was also the year my job shifted from working in an office with clients in and out to working in a windowless room usually without even coworkers to keep me company. And I turned 30 and my brain chemistry shifted and I started struggling with depression and anxiety.
I feel like I need to say “and none of this was really BAD” at this point. Because it wasn’t, my mental issues are extremely mild, working in a windowless room is far from the worst work situation you may have, and the 2016 election hit a lot of people very hard, a lot harder than me. That is something I will say to you, my readers, and I would say to most people because I don’t know their struggles and I don’t necessarily want to say that mine compare. But it is not something I need to say to Shahrukh.
Shahrukh is both a person and bigger than a person. Shahrukh the person, I believe he would personally care if he heard about a young woman struggling mentally. I believe he would even help me. But he can’t help me, he can’t help everyone, he is just a person and his powers are limited.
Shahrukh the idea, Shahrukh the feeling, Shahrukh the image, Shahrukh the Star, he is bigger than just a human person. That Shahrukh, he can cradle me in his strength, hold me in his love, and walk me through the darkest times. He won’t judge me, he won’t measure me against the troubles of others, he sees everything equal and loves all.
Shahrukh the idea isn’t “real” it is something created in our minds, created out of the vision we see onscreen, and the man we hear talking, the life we observe from a great distance. But does that matter? Does it matter if this is just an idea of a thing and not the thing itself? When I am going through long hard nights of the soul, does it matter that I am having conversations with an imagined person who is telling me he loves me and believes in me? No, it doesn’t. He is real to me, he helps me, and that is what I need.
Stardom, Shahrukh’s kind of stardom, is about finding a huge impossible gaping need in the world and discovering that you can grow enough to fill it. The world needs love. The world needs men who love, who feel, who care. Shahrukh the human man, he is just a man, an actor, who picked roles that interested him and played them in a way that felt honest to him. And through that, he touched that need, the hole in the world. Something escaped from him into the vacuum, something that the needs of the world pulled and pushed and inflated until it grew big enough to be everything to everyone, everywhere.
Shahrukh the idea is different from Shahrukh the person, but they are tethered together and if that tether breaks, both will die. I need Shahrukh the idea, I need him deeply and constantly, he is always in my heart and my world. Shahrukh the person, I respect. I think he is a good man, a smart man, a caring man. Because I respect him, the idea that grew out of him stays strong for me. Shahrukh knows that. He knows that every action he takes can either help or hurt that Idea of him that is around the world, that is relied upon by millions of people to get them through their day. I respect him even more because of how hard he works to keep that tether strong, to keep the idea alive, for all of us.
When I was 30, Shahrukh released the movie Fan. It is a dark dark film, and it should have made me even more depressed and anxious than I already was. But, it didn’t. And I think it was because Shahrukh said through that movie “I understand. I know what I mean to you, to all of you, and I will never hurt that. I will always be here for you.” That’s all I needed. Just to know that I would always have Shahrukh, my Shahrukh, in my world, unbroken, unblemished, unchanging.
And that’s why I call him “Shahrukh”. The more common spelling of his name is “Shah Rukh”. But when I was very young and first found him, I saw it as “Shahrukh” and that stuck with me. “Shahrukh” is my idea of a person, is the star who has guided me through the past 20 years of my life. “Shah Rukh” is a very nice good man who lives in India, who I love, and who will never know I exist.
