Perhaps the Twitter user Waad3d best summed up the subcontinent’s concern and devotion for Bollywood superstar Shah Rukh Khan.
Khan, India’s version of Tom Cruise, has been nursing a knee injury and there’s been worry he won’t be well enough to perform a dance routine in the finale at the International Indian Film Academy Awards in Toronto.
Although choreographer Shiamak Davar told the Star Wednesday that he was confident the “very professional” Khan will perform, Khan himself cast some doubt on Twitter Thursday.
“In hospital getting my knee taped up. Feeling awful not being fully fit for IIFA . . . as is attending after so many years . . . will try and do my best. Toronto knee or not here I come !!!” he tweeted early Thursday.
Many among Khan’s legion of followers have been anxious to see him perform at the awards because, in the past, he’s tended to avoid the event.
“SRK I love you so much,” wrote Waad3d, a Twitter user with a modest 13 followers, late Wednesday. “I am so happy to know that you can dance in IIFA. Inshallah your knee will be good.”
God willing indeed.
The 45-year-old Khan has tried to calm his fans, including the nearly 962,000 who follow him on Twitter.
It’s probably best that Khan does try to dispel any potential panic over his ailment. India is a country that takes seriously its icons in the billion-dollar film industry known as Bollywood.
In 2006, another film star, Amitabh Bachchan, checked into a Mumbai hospital complaining of stomach pain.
As word of Bachchan’s illness spread, with news he would need surgery, television crews camped outside, and his fans mobilized.
Members of the Amitabh Bachchan Fans’ Association staged a mahayagna, or grand sacrifice and prayer, for him. Others walked hundreds of kilometres to Mumbai with water brought from the sacred Ganges River. (Bachchan recovered.)
“I don’t think it’s the same because Shah Rukh Khan has not played up his health problems,” said Anna Vetticad, a Mumbai film critic.
Khan got his acting start in a New Delhi high school production of The Wiz and, while he may not be a household name yet in North America, he has no rival when it comes to celebrity status here.
“I am a national obsession,” he said matter-of-factly in 2007. “I’m priceless. I see myself as an employee of an image that’s being created onscreen. Shahruhk (sic) the celebrity is my boss. I would say that I am Shahruhk Khan’s agent, secretary, celebrity manager. I work very hard to ensure he stays at the top.”
Known for his gelled hair and trademark dark sunglasses, Khan enjoys an appeal across India’s class divide. The destitute love him and so do the filthy rich.
In 2009, Khan was travelling to promote My Name is Khan, his movie about racial profiling of Muslims after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, when he was detained for questioning at a U.S. airport because his name matched someone on a watch list. In India, groups of men burned American flags after they learned of the incident.
In December, at a party held in Goa by the watchmaker Tag Heuer, 400 Indians wearing diamonds and Manolo Blahniks played the role of sycophants as Khan played volleyball and hosted a bikini contest.
Khan’s fans “love him like he is a member of the family,” said Anupama Chopra, the author of King of Bollywood: Shah Rukh Khan.
On one occasion, Chopra watched a woman waiting outside a hotel in Chandigarh where Khan was staying. The woman looked educated and affluent and had a young boy with her.
“It turned out he was chaperoning her,” Chopra said. “She said to me that she believed Khan was God and she had just come to the hotel to speak with him and confirm it.”
