The world strives for amortality,Shah Rukh Khan defies the illusion of youth

Shah rukh Khan is middle-aged and he looks it. This bare truism reveals how the Badshah of Bollywood symbolises mortality with all its visual symptoms at a time when much of the world celebrities or not will do anything for a lifetime membership in the Great Global Youth Cult.

Recently,there have been numerous debates around amortality and youth after Time magazine delved into the million mortal details of being Forever Young. The Observer,London,invited Catherine Mayer,author of Amortality: The Pleasures and Perils of Living Agelessly to argue why Shakespeare’s Seven Ages of Man was getting truncated. Most articles put out predictable assertions about youth-obsessed celebrities. Elton John,for instance,is 62,but feels 40 and has adopted a child at a “ripe age”. Playboy’s Hugh Hefner,at 85,believes numbers are a fickle aside as he readies to marry a girl 60 years his junior. Meryl Steep is blessed with natural agelessness,and Our Lady of Material Youth,Madonna will do anything to look and feel young.

Not Shah Rukh Khan. And this is a compelling contrarian story in Indian popular culture,where the elite and the famous are fervent devotees of youthfulness; where six-year-old girls wear Munni skirts and 50-year-olds preen in capri pants. In stark contrast,SRK looks unambiguously on the wrong side of 40,even though he is at the centre of all attention. His wrinkles are pronounced,he looks tired,even haggard.

If rumours that he had a Botox job done are true,let’s just say that the surgeon didn’t know his job. Last month,in Delhi,Khan sported a salted stubble and a rosary in his hands,as if admitting to the irritants of middle age. More recently,he wore a tiny ponytail with a sharp black suit at an event in the capital. His hair was too short to be disciplined by a rubber band but he gave a devil-may-care thumbs-down to fashion’s fastidiousness. If you go by his looks,SRK has dutifully plodded through the Seven Ages of Man. From the promising,passionate Raj of Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge,to the enduring Aman of Kal Ho Na Ho who makes mortality so lyrical that you want it for yourself,to the over-hyped six-packed actor in Om Shanti Om and now the greying,long-haired,anti-hero in Ra.One.

SRK is moving on with life. His age isn’t just a visual statement. His comments,strewn across thousands of interviews,also have the urgency of temporariness. They ring with melodramatic uncertainty and a fear of falling from the grace of stardom. “I am not going to be around forever; I want to make as much money for my children,so I dance at weddings”; “I smoke,yeah,I do”; “I am a joru ka ghulam,Gauri is the one who wears the trousers in the house”; “I am paranoid about the safety of my children”; “I have no idea why women think I am sexy”. Some honest,some in jest,a good package that de-links him from the illusion of being a hot,haute young man.

SRK doesn’t have illicit affairs to prove his most-wanted status on women’s lust lists; he has spinal surgeries instead,which prove that he is not invincible. In his most recent appearance on Koffee With Karan,he bared himself as a man rattling through a noisy mid-life crisis and came across as an emotionally complicated man,as we real people are supposed to be. Some might think he was being corny when he told KJo that he might wake up in his bed one day; but the willingness to be mocked at is a mature man’s wry humour. It is hardly cheesy youthfulness.

At the same time,Khan is the man Lux signed to ignite female desire by putting him into a soapy bathtub. He is also the guy to endorse Fair and Handsome,despite the criticism. When he walks the ramp for a designer wearing his “come-kick-me vulnerability”,we clap and want whatever he is wearing. He is intelligent,so instead of selling the faux orgasm of youthfulness,he sells himself,grey stubble,wrinkles,world-weariness and blue jeans (we are told he owns more than a thousand pairs). For all his drama-queen tantrums,SRK is real. Realism could be an amortal strategy in the archives of fame management; one that may outlive plastic perfection.