Kepzandme alerted me to it being SRK’s 25th anniversary in films today, 25 years since Deewana came out. I am sure everyone in the world is doing 25 songs, 25 scenes, 25 films, kind of posts. I’m not going to bother trying to add to that. Instead, I will do something only I can do, and put in my personal 25 best memories, in no particular order.
25. Every time a new person comes over to my apartment, making them play the fun game of “find all 7 SRK pictures”.
24. For my 21st birthday, my sister gave me a print of the DDLJ poster which is hung in the center of my living room now, as it has been hung in the center of every place I have lived since then.
23. Going to DDLJ at the Maratha Mandir in Bombay, realizing there are no subtitles (of course) but I don’t need them, not because my Hindi is so good, but because I have memorized the script.
(somewhere I have a photo of myself standing on the street under this poster)
22. Watching DDLJ in the laundry room of the dorms on my laptop, because I couldn’t stand to pause the film, even on watch 27, even long enough to put my clothes in the dryer.
21. Saving up money and making DDLJ the first DVD I ever bought.
20. Watching Kuch Kuch Hota Hai and being so excited that I stayed up all night sending my sister an email describing the entire plot.
19. Seeing My Name is Khan in theaters and crying like I was going to die.
18. Seeing Ra. One in theaters with friends, and watching them dance in front of the screen during the end credits after everyone else left the theater.
17. Seeing Chennai Express in theaters for the 4th time, at 10:30 at night, in the middle of a blizzard, with 2 friends plus the 18 other people in the theater who were also dedicated enough SRK fans to watch it at 10:30 at night in the middle of a blizzard on the 4th week it was out.
16. Myself, and all my friends, spontaneously deciding to cancel other Valentine’s plans and instead get samosas and watch the Inner/Outer World of SRK documentary.
15. Watching Dilwale opening night with 7 friends, in a sold out theater full of SRK fangirls who screamed so loud we couldn’t hear the dialogue.
14. Buying a massive 100 Shahrukh songs CD and listening to it back and forth and back and forth every time I took the bus to visit my best friend 7 hours away while she was in med school.
13. Feeling like I could fly after I watched out of the theater after seeing DDLJ for the first time.
12. That moment, at the end of the SLAM concert, when we noticed the massive heap of overturned chairs through the floor of the auditorium, like a tornado had come through, only it was just marking where Shahrukh had passed and the crowd had surged.
11. That moment when he arrived at the SLAM tour, and 11,000 people held their collective breath watching this tiny figure walk into the floor, and then have a mass spiritual experience as the spotlight came down and he surged into the air.
10. The moment when I was sitting in the theater, watching DDLJ, and he told Kajol he wouldn’t come to her wedding, and backed away, and I fell in love.
9. Watching Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi, and that moment when he bows and freezes in front of Anushka before the end dance starts, and I knew this was something slightly different from what I had seen from Shahrukh before.
8. Singing along to “Yun Hi Chala Chal” while doing kitchen chores with my sister at my grandmother’s house.
7. Walking down the street talking to my sister on a cell phone when the title song of Kuch Kuch Hota Hai came on the songs DVD she was watching and suddenly both of us are singing along together, and I don’t even care that people are watching me.
6. Following the conflict around the release of My Name is Khan and suddenly realizing just how much I had come to care about the events happening on the other side of the world only due to my fandom for one person.
5. Walking into the movie store and having the owner hand me Om Shanti Om before I had to ask, because I had been coming in once a week for 2 months asking when it would be out.
4. Being at a friend’s house on the evening of November 1, realizing it was about to be midnight, and convincing them all to put a candle in a cake and sing “Happy Birthday” at midnight.
3. Seeing the “Chammak Challo” song trailer and getting that little burst of joy that is so rare in life. And then re-watching it 5 million times.
2. Watching Jab Tak Hain Jaan opening night, and having two friends on either side of me grabbing my arms and screaming in my ears during the kiss scene.
1.1. Right now, sitting in my new apartment, looking at the 3 SRK pictures which were the first things I had to put up to know that I was “home”.
dontcallitbollywood 
“That moment when he arrived at the SLAM tour, and 11,000 people held their collective breath watching this tiny figure walk into the floor, and then have a mass spiritual experience as the spotlight came down and he surged into the air.”‘
I was there too. I was a serious fan before I saw him at SLAM but after, I became a superfan in a way I never was in my life: not for a rock star, a movie star and certainly not for someone I actually knew.
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It was just unbelievable seeing him live. That tour had a fair number of big names, but he was on another level. Since then, I’ve seen a half dozen or so other concerts, and there is still nothing like Shahrukh.
on the other hand, I have a friend who got to meet aamir while he was shooting in Chicago, and it was the same for her. Just literally changed her life meeting him in person.
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And then there are statements like this that he has made: “You can take away the money and the awards, but you can’t take away the fact that I became SHAH RUKH KHAN’ – @iamsrk” No one in the West comes close and no one in India either. (I can’t vouch for China)’\
Happy 25th!!
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I am not crying you are crying. (you and I are soul sisters. Soul. Sisters.)
My life’s dream is to meet him one day and get him to sign the DDLJ poster that’s on my living room wall right now.
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Also, going forward, I am going to be commenting as DDLJ17, not kepzandme.
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Karan just tweeted too! So sweet the pair of them are. So sweet 🙂
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I approved this comment under the new name, so you won’t be in moderation with it from now on.
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These are all such wonderful memories that you have shared
I hope you don’t mind if I share some of mine:
I remember watching Deewana, and falling for SRK at the same time that Divya Bharti did. The moment he said ‘Mujhe Kajal bheek mein dede, maa, mujhe Kajal bheek mein dede’; the moment he filled her maang with sindoor. Just………………………
I remember hearing the story of DDLJ for the first time when my friend told me about it, crammed in the back of her car as her parents dropped my family off
I remember watching DDLJ for the first time- I fell for him again at the same moment you did.
I remember listening to ‘Ye jo Des hai Mera’ over and over, sitting on my own in the empty lecture theatre when I was at medical school, tears running down my face as that song spoke to the NRI in me.
I remember watching ‘Chak De’ and weeping yet again- in my opinion, SRK’s acting in that movie is one of his best roles ever
I remember his tiny cameo in the ridiculous Akshay Kumar version of 3men+a Baby; that cameo made the film for me
I remember seeing the trailer for KKHH for the first time when I was in India- my cousins and I sat and analysed the trailer over and over for hints of what it meant. One of my cousins accurately predicted that the fact Rani was in white meant she was ‘dead’ in the movie. I remember watching the songs over and over on YouTube (in it’s early days) in the computer lab at medical school, cos I didn’t have the internet at home.
I remember my ‘treat’ for passing my exams was being taken to see DDLJ in the cinema in London (we were lucky it was showing, back in the day, Hindi films were rarely shown). I wept from the moment SRK stood in front of that funeral pyre, all the way through to the break, then again throughout the entire second half!
SRK has been part of my life for 25 years now. He (together with Amitabh, Sallu Bhaiyya and AamirKhan) have between them been in my life every single day since I was about 7years old.
Thank you for your memories
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I am a little jealous that you got to grow up with Shahrukh. I didn’t find him until I was 19. But then I wouldn’t want to give up any of my memories for your memories. That’s what’s so wonderful, that he can be such a personal experience for billions of people around the globe, we each have our own special SRK moments in our lives.
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This is so sweet!
I wouldn’t call myself a fan but Shahrukh has always been a part of my life whether it was watching Kuch Kuch Hota Hai as an infant or waiting to see Jab Harry Met Sejal now. Technically it’s Shahrukh Khan movies that brought me back into Hindi movies in 2014 which led me to Varun and everyone else that I have grown to love.
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When I started to think about it, that 25 years really has a weight to it, doesn’t it? So many people who grew up with him, who are still fans today. Other people who got married, had their own children, lived their whole lives, with Shahrukh in the background. Heck, people like you were he has literally been there your entire life! Like Mount Rushmore or something.
On Sun, Jun 25, 2017 at 1:58 PM, dontcallitbollywood wrote:
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Yes it does! It’s rare even in Indian cinema for a star to have the same or more following after 25 years. You know, my mom was recently telling me the story about she skipped class with her friends in college to watch a movie without telling her parents. When I asked what movie it was, she said that it was DDLJ. I just thought that was really cool that a few years later, she would end up watching KKHH with me.
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I actually know a couple in real life where the guy traveled from Morocco (instead of London) to see his girl’s family in India, convince her parents and get married. Every year on their anniversary, they watch DDLJ together, and try to be in Mumbai to catch it at Maratha Mandir. For them, Shah Rukh is a part of their family, and they have grown up with him. They have a son called Raju after Raj!
So this connection you are talking about is very sweet and universal and special.
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I had a co-worker whose parents watched Sholay on their honeymoon, and whenever people asked them when they got married, they would just say “The year Sholay came out”. Like you might say “the day before Pearl Harbor” or something. It was this shared landmark in everyone’s life, so you could use it as universal shorthand.
Not exactly the same thing you are talking about, but in that same family. And this is the thing I had to explain in every single film class I took! Indian film is just in a different place in society than film is for other cultures.
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