I’m in that perfect mood of tired but wanting a distraction that leads to very short fanfic ideas. So, for today’s TGIF, let us look at photos of Shahrukh in real life and pretend they are characters he is playing.
Shahrukh as the protective head of an immortal family of witches/vampires/ghosts/whatever.
Shahrukh as the funny but wise professor consultant in a BBC crime miniseries. Expert on medieval art or something that is surprisingly relevant to a series of bloody murders.
Shahrukh as the second in command and consultant to Kamal Haasan’s terrifying businessman gangster.
Shahrukh as the local cop who shows action hero Brad Pitt the ropes when he has to solve a mystery in Bombay. Shahrukh shocks him when he punches a suspect into confessing, and shocks Brad again when he lets slip he is a Grandpa (“we marry young here”). In the end, Brad brings his no-longer-estranged wife to India to meet Shahrukh and his wife and kids (the teenage daughter has a crush on Brad, of course).
Shahrukh as an aging gigolo trying to win over the dignified and unbreakable wealthy widow Sharmila. Of course, she eventually leaves him for Dharmendra.
Shahrukh as the aging businessman trying to keep the peace and hide the secrets at his daughter’s wedding after he discovers her future mother-in-law is his ex-girlfriend that his wife of 25 years doesn’t know about.
Shahrukh Khan as fast talking Delhi businessman (runs a taxi company) who goes back to school and keeps it a secret from his college age kids and wife because he is embarrassed until they surprise him at the graduation and he proudly holds up his degree.
Shahrukh as a widower who goes to Goa to find a new beginning and discovers painting/writing/volunteer work/something.
Shahrukh as the confused protective billionaire father in a new age remake of The Taming of the Shrew, with Anushka as the complex Catriona and Katrina as the simple and shallow Bianca.
Shahrukh and Juhi as the nice couple next door who give advice to the young lovers that are always fighting and struggling with their live-in relationship. And then in a twist ending, you learn they are in a live-in relationship too, never quite got around to getting married.
Shahrukh as the powerful TV host (twice divorced, father of three, his life is his work) who investigates and reveals evil in the world, but then is caught up in a scam that goes further than even he expected.
Shahrukh and Aamir as two aging Indian conmen who pull of one last big score, tricking white businessman into giving them tons of money (oh wait, that’s reality)
Shahrukh as the trusted aging Bihari servant of a wealthy household who finds himself on the run with the child of the household after armed men break in and kill the rest of the family. He has to keep the child safe and prove his own innocence when he is framed for the crime.
Okay, that’s it! I’ve run out of energy again!
Out of these photos, which is your favorite?
For me, definitely this one.
And which story is your favorite?
I think I want to see Shahrukh and Rani and Kajol in a love triangle farce in which their kids are getting married more than anything. Can you imagine Rani as an over the top wealthy widow pursuing her old college boyfriend for one last fling as Shahrukh desperately tries to run from her and also hide it all, including their college romance, from Kajol who he always told was his one and only love of his life. And trying to keep his daughter’s marriage to the young man she loves from falling apart.
dontcallitbollywood 
Sorry, I was distracted by the linen trousers. So I must request the rumpled second career artist-poet.
LikeLike
I wonder what that plot would look like? Maybe he was a wild artist youth in Goa, and then fell in love with a visiting tourist and married her and started working for her father’s company and had a passle of kids and was very happy, but she died and he feels lost and is returning to his roots. Yes! I like that! And he can be adopted by a gang of young artist types and help them with their problems using his wise advice and life experience, and at the end of the film he has a health scare and his kids show up to “rescue” him and take care of him, only to discover that his friends are taking care of him and he is fine living his own life, although he loves that they visited (I don’t want to make the kids cruel, just picturing their father in a certain way and having a hard time adjusting).
On Fri, Oct 19, 2018 at 12:57 PM dontcallitbollywood wrote:
>
LikeLike
I’d take your idea of Shah Rukh as the head of an immortal family of paranormal creatures, and instead make him the head of the Talamasca from Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles and Mayfair Witches series. From Wikipedia: The Talamasca Caste (or Order of the Talamasca or simply Talamasca) is described as a secret society set up to watch over and keep track of the paranormal, in particular, witches, spirits, werewolves and vampires. Rice describes them as “psychic detectives”.
That would also bring in part of your idea of Shah Rukh as a consulting professor in a murder mystery, and would also go wonderfully well with the excellent photo of him in the academic hood.
I would take any any idea that would pair him with Juhi again. What about a House of Cards dynamic with them being a political or industrial power couple. Maybe set in London to make it a bit “safer” from an Indian politics point of view. Juhi could be the ambitious politician (a la Gulab Gang), challenged by a young upstart in her party, and an old rival in the opposing party, and Shah Rukh could be her spouse who took the lead in raising their kids, schmoozing rich donors (especially rich older women), and getting the dirt on Juhi’s enemies.This photo might work better for that idea:
I like the widower in Goa idea but would sex it up considerably. Shah Rukh was a faithful and loving husband but he and his wife married young and had a very conventional, nice but not amazing, sex life. In Goa he discovers his more passionate and adventurous side as well as his creative side. He hires three women to teach him stuff–one to teach him Italian cooking, one to help him take his daily yoga practice to a new level, and one to teach him painting or pottery. They are a variety of ages, personalities, and looks/body types. Maybe one is European or American. There is romantic tension and flirtation with each of them. He ends up getting very confused about who he is and what he wants. One of the women gets angry at his vacillating and drops him; the second woman then helps him figure out a new way to be, and that he is truly in love with the third woman. The Dear Zingagi photo is perfect.
My favorite photo here is the TV host one. I love his posture and expression, and the way he’s holding the microphone. Very distracting. Anyway, what if he’s a self-satisfied TV host whose life is shaken when someone he’s just been interviewing, dismissing her allegations of a sinister conspiracy, is murdered just outside the studio? He can team up with a crusading lawyer (male or female, in their early 30s) to get to the bottom of it.
LikeLike
Yes! To all of these! Shahrukh can be the Van Helsing/Giles type, the one who mentors the group of young Vampire/Werewolf/Whatever fighters. Whenever they run across an artifact they can’t identify or a mysterious new enemy, they go to his crowded warm little cottage and he gives them a big lecture with all the background, but it’s interesting because it’s Shahrukh and he can make anything interesting. And then there are the occasional very special episodes where he is in danger and has to defend himself, he isn’t a big action hero about it, he is just really smart and figures out perfect boobytraps for whatever demon they are hunting. And his backstory can be that he lost his wife to a Vampire back in India, and ran away to England to escape the memories. And maybe slowly over the course of a season we learn that he is starting a little romance with, like, a nice middle-aged divorcee he met through a knitting group he joined.
Love the Shahrukh Juhi idea too, especially if we do a House of Cards like twist where you see him schmoozing and romancing and you think he is being unfaithful, but then it is revealed that Juhi knows everything all along and they decide these things as partners. And if Juhi is the enforcer one, Shahrukh is charming and so on, but Juhi is the one who comes out with her soft little voice and brings down the hammer.
The Goa thought that just occurred to me was to make him bisexual. I don’t want his marriage to have been unhappy or unsatisfying, so I wouldn’t want him to discover he was gay, but maybe he finds himself bonding and slowly falling in love with a young man he meets there. Not super young, but like a 35 to his 50. But I like your idea a lot too, I would vote that the Italian cooking teacher is the one who actually tries to kiss him after he makes her dinner as his “graduation”, and he pushes her away and she is insulted. I’d vote someone younger for that, young enough to be insulted, maybe Lara Dutta? She has started a second career as a character actress and I kind of love her. The yoga teacher is Shilpa Shetty, let’s say, closer to his age than she seems, very comfortable with her own skin, dating several different young man at once and having fun. She helps Shahrukh realize that the polyamorous life is not for him, after first tempting him a little with the idea of it. And then the remaining woman would be Tabu, at first the one he gets along with the worst, shy and abrupt and confusing, but slowly they get closer and closer, and in reality she is the most sexually adventurous of them all, she has had a series of passionate affairs, but mostly they were just sex. The last affair ended badly, he was engaged to someone else but kept coming around to her because the sex was so good, and she feels guilty and wrong about that and has decided to take a break from relationships. Maybe she first meets Shahrukh at that wedding and that’s why she is so rude and strange in their first meeting. So at the end of it, Shahrukh gets past all his confusion and hang ups and realizes he doesn’t want a casual relationship with her but he is also okay with her having had casual relationships in the past, and she realizes he is someone that she can have more than just sex with.
And that is exactly what I was picturing with the TV host! Kind of shallow and silly, but then gets caught up in something big. And has some actual skills, can charm anyone and always find the sore spot that needs more questioning, and can put things together from back in the day when he used to do his own research. How about he interviewed a tough female lawyer investigating a water scam (it’s always a water scam), she died just after, and at the funeral he is confronted by her furious older sister who blames him for her death. He can’t get over the guilt, starts investigating with the sister. The sister is an unhappily married housewife, she rediscovers her interest in work and so on as she works with Shahrukh (another Juhi role!) and in the end her invites her to join him as co-anchor of his new show, and she walks out on her ungrateful husband. Oh, and Shahrukh also took 6 weeks off to reconnect with his kids after all their near death experiences on the investigation. It’s not explicit that Shahrukh and Juhi will end up together, but it is implied they might now that her divorce is under way and his private life is less of a disaster.
On Fri, Oct 19, 2018 at 1:46 PM dontcallitbollywood wrote:
>
LikeLiked by 1 person
Good casting for the women in Goa! I was thinking Shilpa for the yoga teacher, and maybe Vidya for the Italian cooking teacher. I love Tabu for the painting/pottery teacher whom he ends up with at the end, and I love her backstory too!
He would do a beautiful job as a widower falling in love with a man for the first time in his life. It just seems so far outside the realm of possibility for the kinds of movies he makes. I’d vote for Irrfan as his love interest. Just the thought is making me lightheaded. Irrfan would be an out gay man whose long term partner also died a few years back. As he and Shah Rukh start falling for each other, Irrfan’s friends are all cautioning him against falling for a “straight” guy. Shah Rukh’s kids are bewildered because they never saw the romantic side of their dad, but come to accept Irrfan and being happy for them. Just a slow, sweet, romance with pretty songs. Sigh.
I like your version of the TV host and older sister lawyer. I think a non-romantic thriller version with Shah Rukh as the TV host and Shahid as the scrappy crusading lawyer–neither related to the murder victim–could also be fun.
LikeLike
I was thinking a widower being seduced by a younger man, but I like your version a lot better. Two widowers, both a little shy about starting a new relationship and nervous, neither of them have been on a date in 40 year. Both of them feeling vaguely unfaithful to their lost love. And just as they start to work through all those feelings, the whole bisexual thing comes up with Shahrukh’s kids not being able to accept him as having loved both their mother and this man, and Irrfan’s friends (including a younger man who is like a son, was thrown out by his family as a teen and Irrfan and his partner took him in. Shahrukh is jealous of him when he first meets him, without understanding why he is jealous yet, because he thinks he is Irrfan’s boyfriend) not trusting Shahrukh to really love Irrfan if he had been married to a woman for 40 years. We can even keep your structure, Shahrukh decides to move to Goa and learn new things, his yoga teacher and cooking teachers help him come to terms with the feelings he has for his Urdu poetry teacher, Irrfan. Maybe his cooking teacher flirts with him and he flirts back, but then realizes he would much rather be with Irrfan than with her because he is in love with Irrfan (although he desires them both, men and women). And the yoga teacher is also bisexual and helps him understand and accept that about himself. Or maybe the cooking teacher is a young attractive man and Shahrukh at first thinks he should be attracted to him if he is attracted to men, but then realizes it isn’t “men” he wants, but Irrfan in particular?
You know what would be really interesting for the TV reporter story? If it is Shahrukh and his estranged son. Maybe Shahid (or whoever) was the child of his first college romance, a marriage that ended within months. He was raised by his mother and resented his father, lots of emotions under the surface. Shahrukh had the interviewer on the show in the first place as a favor to him which Shahid asked for ungraciously and Shahrukh gave ungraciously (feeling that if Shahid’s mother didn’t want them to be close, and Shahrukh sent money every month, what more should Shahid want? While Shahid feels that Shahrukh was a terrible father for never remembering birthdays or promises or college graduations, and also just a terrible reporter who never goes after hte real stories). They agree to investigate together but pretend to be just colleagues and strangers, no father-son nonsense. Only of course as they spend more time together they start to remember the good times they had, Shahrukh surprising him and taking him out of boarding school or staying up late reading to him, or how Shahrukh missed a big interview because Shahid had his appendix out. And then the grand finale is when Shahrukh is willing give his life to save his son, having fully embraced all his fatherly emotions.
On Fri, Oct 19, 2018 at 2:46 PM dontcallitbollywood wrote:
>
LikeLiked by 1 person
I like the estranged son angle. Oh, I can’t wait til Shah Rukh starts playing a parent of teenage or adult children–so many complicated emotions and stories to mine!
LikeLike
I’m trying to imagine what would be considered more offending for the fans & SRK himself-playing gay, three timing or having a daughter of marriageable age. I would love it any of the mainstream heroes in any language plays any of these roles. But I doubt even Nagarjuna who has come the closest to playing his age would take these up.
LikeLike
Thank goodness fanfiction exists so we can force them into these roles against their wills in our imagination!
On Sat, Oct 20, 2018 at 8:56 AM dontcallitbollywood wrote:
>
LikeLike
Yay fanfic! Heading over to read the new one based on the Goa idea now!
LikeLike
Haha, this made me chuckle. You’re so right!
I went up to re-read my initial idea after I read “three-timing”. I said “romantic tension and flirting” with all of them–not 3 simultaneous sexual relationships. I’m too old fashioned for that also. 🙂 What would be a more interesting story to me is the confusion resulting from having these feelings for multiple people at the same time after not having them for anyone but his wife for a long time.
LikeLike