As Shah Rukh Khan turns 60, to those growing up in the 1990s, his seven films returning to theatres feel like a collective diary of how they fell in love, broke their hearts, and found their way back through him
Growing up in the 1990s, I can pinpoint the precise moment when Shah Rukh Khan entered the story of my life. In 1989, when Fauji — featuring the youthful actor with unruly hair and bangs that covered his forehead, deep dimples and brown eyes — aired on Doordarshan, I was too young. When Deewana (1992), SRK’s debut, released (a golden jubilee film, it ran in theatres for 50 weeks) my school friends and I had found a new heartthrob. The girls had found their new crush; the boys, their role model. We aped the way SRK delivered his dialogue, the way he dressed, the self-assured charm that felt rehearsed and spontaneous at once. It was from him that we learnt a new grammar of confidence. To impress a girl then was to imitate Shah Rukh Khan through gestures practised in mirrors, secretly.
Directed by Raj Kanwar and starring the luminous Divya Bharti alongside Rishi Kapoor, Deewana wasn’t conceived as a debut vehicle for SRK; he made his entry after the first hour, and his name was buried somewhere in small fonts on the posters. The film was meant to sell on the charm of its established male lead (Kapoor) and the vivacious Divya. When Shah Rukh burst into the frame, all awkward, nervous energy and hungry eyes, he ended up changing the very template of romance in Hindi films. It was a time when India was just learning to live with satellite TV, jeans were still aspirational, and the catchy music of Nadeem-Shravan had us ensnared.
Deewana’s songs — Aisi Deewangi Dekhi Nahi Kahi (Such madness for love, I’ve never seen anywhere), Tere Dard Se Dil Aabad Raha (My heart stays alive through the ache of you), and Sochenge Tumhe Pyaar Karien Ke Nahin (I’ll think about whether to love you or not) — played on loop on radio and cassette decks, filling the air of middle-class homes with that peculiar ache of unsaid affection. I was particularly in love with the song picturised on SRK and sung by Vinod Rathod: Koi Na Koi Chahiye Pyar Karne Wala (The heart hankers for someone to love). Teri Ummeed Tera Intezar Karte Hain (I think of you in love, in hope, in waiting).
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Kumar Sanu’s nasal touch and Sadhana Sargam’s trembling sweetness floated across terraces at dusk, over the clatter of pressure cookers, through transistor static in tea stalls. The film’s music was composed in the full flourish of the Nadeem-Shravan era. To us, these songs spoke what could not be said, held what could not be articulated. In school corridors, when a girl’s dupatta brushed past or when notebooks were exchanged with hesitant smiles, Deewana’s tracks scored the scene in our minds long before real feelings could find their vocabulary.
When Divya Bharti died barely a year later, the film acquired a strange afterlife. Shah Rukh Khan, by then signing films like Raju Ban Gaya Gentleman and Baazigar, would soon explode into superstardom, but Deewana would forever be etched in our memory as the film that fuelled our adolescent yearnings. Watching the film (it’s available on YouTube) now feels like opening an old diary: the story is steeped in melodrama and SRK has admitted to overacting in it, but there’s something raw and unrepeatable about it. In his entry scene, SRK did multiple stunts on a Yamaha RT 180, with his band of boys in tow, out to win over the girls’ hearts.
The star who taught me the idiom of love when he was all of 26 has turned 60 now. With seven of his films returning to theatres this week — Kabhi Haan Kabhi Naa, Dil Se, Devdas, Main Hoon Na, Om Shanti Om, Chennai Express and Jawan — the memory if Deewana came flooding back to me: it was after all my first encounter with a rank outsider who would go on to become the Badshah of Bollywood. As for the films being re-released in theatres, they are seven checkpoints in the story of a man, and of a country learning how to fall in love with itself
Kabhi Haan Kabhi Naa (1994): The loser as everyman
In this coming-of-age romantic comedy-drama film directed by Kundan Shah, which brought cadet cap in vogue, SRK plays a lovable ‘loser’ who does not ultimately get the girl. The story follows Sunil (Khan), a middle-class young man and a passionate musician, who is deeply in love with Anna, the lead singer of his band (Suchitra Krishnamoorthi), but she only considers him a friend. Anna is in love with another band member, Chris (Deepak Tijori), so Sunil, in his desperation to win her affection, employs various tricks and lies to create a rift between the couple.
After his deceit is exposed, Anna and the band temporarily shun him; however, they eventually forgive him, and Anna’s family even considers him a potential groom after Chris’s parents object to their relationship. In a selfless act of love, Sunil ultimately decides to reunite Anna and Chris, facilitating their marriage on their wedding day, and the film concludes with him, heartbroken but having learned a valuable lesson about life and love, encountering another girl (Juhi Chawla in a cameo).
Kabhi Haan Kabhi Naa is a film about failing gracefully. For many middle-class men coming of age in that decade, it was also the first time they saw themselves on screen: a hero who stuttered, lied, but remained endearing. The film was tremendously relatable: In the small towns of Uttar Pradesh, Haryana, Punjab or anywhere else for that matter, boys like Sunil were everywhere: college backbenchers in denim jackets, building dreams on borrowed guitars.
Dil Se.. (1998): The age of obsession
By 1998, India had changed. The FM radio had replaced All India Radio, and a more confident middle class was emerging. Directed by Mani Ratnam, the intense and unconventional romantic thriller, set against the sensitive backdrop of the insurgency in Northeast India, explored the clash between love and ideology. Amarkant Varma (Khan), an All India Radio journalist, becomes obsessed with a mysterious woman, Meghna (Manisha Koirala), whom he repeatedly encounters during his assignment in the region. Despite his relentless pursuit, Meghna consistently rejects him due to her hidden life as a member of a separatist militant group on a suicide mission in Delhi.
As Amar prepares to marry Preeti (Preity Zinta in her debut role), Meghna re-enters his life, forcing a tragic climax where his all-consuming love for her culminates in their deaths when she detonates her explosive vest while they embrace. Noted as the final part of Ratnam’s political trilogy (after Roja and Bombay), the film features stunning cinematography by Santosh Sivan, and A.R. Rahman’s iconic soundtrack featuring hits like Chaiyya Chaiyya, shot on a moving train.
Devdas (2002): The great tragedy
By 2002, the boy who was introduced to the madness called love after watching Deewana, was a grown-up man, filled with the need ‘to love and be loved.’ And a jabra (ardent) fan of SRK. Devdas made him aware of the seductions of despair and the extent to which one could go for love. Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s opulent adaptation of the 1917 Bengali novel by Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay, the film revolves around Devdas Mukherjee (Khan), the wealthy, yet weak-willed, son of a zamindar (landowner), who returns from his studies to marry his spirited childhood sweetheart, Parvati or ‘Paro’ (Aishwarya Rai), a girl from a slightly lower social class.
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When his family's pride and rigid class structure lead them to reject the marriage proposal with disdain, Devdas goes adrift and ultimately fails to stand up to his parents, causing a heartbroken and humiliated Paro to marry a much older, wealthy man. A shattered Devdas then spirals into a life of self-destruction and chronic alcoholism, finding a complex refuge with the golden-hearted courtesan Chandramukhi (Madhuri Dixit), who falls head over heels in live with him and nurses him as his health deteriorates.
Shah Rukh Khan strikes his signature pose in Chennai Express
In a final, desperate act to fulfil a vow to see Paro one last time before dying, Devdas travels to her marital home, where he collapses and dies at her doorstep as she runs in vain to meet him, a victim of social constraints, pride, and his own emotional failings. SRK made it fashionable to feel doomed. SRK had taken the vulnerability of his character in Kabhi Haan Kabhi Naa and pushed it to its breaking point. He had shown how love, when it’s stripped of optimism, becomes a form of sickness.
Main Hoon Na (2004): The cool patriot
In the action-comedy, the directorial debut of Farah Khan, SRK plays Major Ram Prasad Sharma, who is sent on a dual mission: to go undercover as a student at St. Paul’s College in Darjeeling to protect the daughter of an army general, Sanjana (Amrita Rao), from a rogue militant named Raghavan (Sunil Shetty), who seeks to prevent a peace initiative with Pakistan called ‘Project Milaap’. Simultaneously, Ram aims to fulfil his dying father’s last wish of reuniting with his estranged wife and his half-brother, Laxman ‘Lucky’ (Zayed Khan), who, by a twist of fate, also studies at the same college and is best friends with Sanjana.
As Ram attempts to navigate college life, mend family ties, and thwart the terrorist plot, ultimately succeeding in both his personal and professional missions. SRK’s Major Ram Prasad Sharma was a soldier and student, protector and romantic, awkward and idealistic. For the generation that once watched him fail in love, here he was, saving the day with both laughter and tears intact. Watching him in Main Hoon Na was like watching your own nervous adolescence turn adult, still clumsy, but sure of purpose. For many in that period, it marked the end of innocence. The world had become bigger; SRK had simply grown into it
Om Shanti Om (2007): The rebirth of stardom
Farah Khan returned the romantic fantasy, starring Shah Rukh Khan in a dual role and marking the film debut of Deepika Padukone. The story, a homage to Bollywood, begins in the 1970s with Om Prakash Makhija (Khan), a junior artist with dreams of stardom, who falls in love with the superstar actress Shantipriya (Padukone). He saves her life on a film set, and they become friends; however, he soon discovers she is secretly married to the egotistical producer Mukesh Mehra (Arjun Rampal), who later traps a pregnant Shanti in a burning film studio to protect his career, causing both her and Om (while trying to save her) to die.
Thirty years later, Om is reincarnated as Om Kapoor, a successful modern-day superstar who begins experiencing vivid flashbacks of his past life and tragic demise. Fuelled by these returning memories and aided by his past life’s best friend and the ghost of Shanti, Om orchestrates an elaborate plan to expose Mukesh’s crimes and ensure Shanti’s soul finally finds peace. But beneath the camp and costume, the film carried a melancholy that only became visible with time. It was about the price of becoming an image. The crazy lover of Deewana was now an institution performing his own myth.
Chennai Express (2013): The midlife detour
Rohit Shetty’s romantic action-comedy is centred on Rahul Mithaiwala (SRK), a 40-year-old bachelor from Mumbai who reluctantly travels to a small town in Tamil Nadu to immerse his late grandfather’s ashes in Rameswaram. On the train, in a spoof of a famous scene from the film Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge, he helps a young woman, Meenalochni ‘Meenamma’ Azhagusundaram (Padukone), board the moving train, only to discover she is the daughter of a powerful local don, Durgeshwara Azhagusundaram, fleeing an arranged marriage to a formidable man named Tangaballi.
Rahul is involuntarily drawn into her plight and taken to her village, where he must navigate a series of comical and dangerous situations, including the language barrier. As they embark on an adventurous journey across South India, dodging Meenamma’s armed cousins and fiancé, Rahul and Meenamma fall in love. Ultimately, Rahul returns with Meenamma to her village, where he challenges Tangaballi to a fight and come out victorious, convincing her father that ‘love knows no regional or language barriers,’ and allowing them to marry. The film was a massive commercial success and broke several box office records. Chennai Express was slapstick, loud and ridiculous, but SRK made it work. SRK knew the culture had changed and the audience had grown cynical, but he found a way to be both sincere and silly.
Jawan (2023): The return of the rebel
If the earlier decades were all about love, Jawan was about coming to terms with all that had gone wrong with the country. The boy from the 1990s was middle-aged, scrolling through news feeds full of gloom and doom, angry but helpless. His hero returned: grayer but with the fire and the ire in the soul intact. Directed by Atlee, the high-octane action thriller saw Khan in a dual role as a father and son, Vikram and Azad Rathore, who become vigilantes fighting against a corrupt system and a dangerous arms dealer named Kaali Gaikwad (Vijay Sethupathi). This plot follows Azad, a jailer of a women’s prison, who, along with a team of female inmates, executes a series of audacious heists and social interventions to expose corporate and government corruption, from faulty military weapons to the tragic issue of farmer suicides and healthcare scandals.
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The narrative is packed with action sequences, emotional drama, and several plot twists, including an extended cameo by Padukone, ultimately leading to the father and son duo teaming up to bring justice to the oppressed and urging citizens to use their vote wisely. It was overtly political and furious. For the first time, SRK seemed less interested in romance than in setting things right, a conscience keeper of the country he had taught how to fall in love to. SRK’s arms had stretched to hold an entire country. It was, in many ways, the final evolution of the 1990s lover-boy. The chocolate boy who was seeking love was now demanding justice. The charm had not disappeared, it had only changed direction.
Sixty years, and still ours, still at it
It’s tempting to call this nostalgia, but that’s too easy. What re-watching these seven films reveals is continuity: the invisible thread between a country’s emotional education and one man’s filmography. Shah Rukh Khan has made the language of love and longing come alive on 70 MM. The boys who grew up on his films can track their own biography through SRK’s. The first crush, the romance, the breakup, the reawakening, the fight for the course correction of the country led astray. Every decade has its corresponding film. His 60th birthday feels oddly personal because of what we’ve done through him: the lives we have lived with the light of his films guiding our way, all the selves we have tried on, each in our own distinctive way.
On November 2, the boys who once bunked school to watch Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge will bring their children to Jawan. Somewhere in the darkness of the theatre, one of them will think of his first heartbreak, of the classmate who looked back just once, of the walk home after Kabhi Haan Kabhi Naa, of the night he cried to Satrangi Re, of the silly thrill of repeating “Palat?” to every girl he had a crush on. Shah Rukh Khan turns t60. But for the generation that learned how to fall in and express love from him, he isn’t aging. Like the film reel looping back to the start, flickering, steady, familiar. The boy in the audience when Deewana released is still there, somewhere inside the man in me. Still looking at that face on screen and thinking: this is what love looked like in our heydays. To scores of his fans, it still does.
