In 2004, on December 17, Ashutosh Gowariker’s Swades was released. As Mohan Bhargava, Shah Rukh Khan arguably gave his best performance ever. Mohan gives up his cushy job at NASA for the khushi of returning to his roots in India. His journey may seem a little touristic. But the film’s heart is in the right place. It moves you in ways that films about desh-bhakti seldom do. Ashutosh Gowariker’s direction eschews jingoism and rabble-rousing rhetoric. And SRK has never been more stripped of his mannerisms.
Swades was exceptional because it was very far removed from SRK’s other films. When we spoke about it SRK refused to mourn the failure. “I always say it’s not the manzil but the journey that matters. I often don’t watch my completed film. I enjoy the process of acting in them. I push it promote it, participate in the projection… and then I move on. Then I don’t make any inquiries about the box office performance. It isn’t that I’m detached from the end-result, because I hope for the sake of the people behind my films that they do well. I enjoy doing all my film regardless of how it finally performs. As for Swades, I told the director Ashutosh Gowariker that it won’t work commercially. The film was nobly intended.”
SRK had liked himself in Swades. “I think like my character in Swades. Unfortunately I’m not in a position to change the way our society functions. My efforts to bring social awareness should not be restricted to short films on cancer, polio and AIDS. I think cinema is a very important medium of putting social messages across. My previous film, Paheli, was again an entertainer with a social message. It talked about women’s emancipation. But it wasn’t a bra-burning propaganda film. I want the message in my film to be more fun-oriented. That’s where I come from.I started with street theatre. And we used to put across ideas on family planning or dowry with a lot of enjoyment. I love nautanki, folk theatre, cartoons and puppetry. These are vibrant forms of artistic expression. I love to express myself through basic art forms.”
SRK had once called himself a bhand. He defended his self-deprecatory description. “I see nothing wrong with that word. The bhand performs a beautiful art-form. Unfortunately, we tend to think of it as cheap or derogatory. They were the first genuine actors of our country, though I suspect Parsi theatre was older.”
Swades propelled SRK towards more mainstream themes. “I don’t tell filmmakers what to make with me. I didn’t write Swades. I can’t tell writers to write a film keeping in mind whether 22 people or 22 million people liked it. I just do what they ask me to. I like to sell a dream. I like to tell stories. I’m a very good storyteller. I can convert the most boring topic into a riveting tale. I tell stories to my children every night. Some stories they don’t like, so I avoid them. Others they like and I repeat them with variations. I can’t keep repeating the same story the same way just because it works once. Filmmakers also need to understand that.”
