Jawan has released, and knowing my extreme adulation for the superstar, everyone asked when I was going to watch it.
Honestly, I wasn’t keen.
I wanted to be in the front row of the theatres when SRK came out with Pathaan at the beginning of this year. The reasons were many – he was back on the big screen after ages and I also wanted to defy the haters.
I dragged my teenage son and tween daughter. My children were not impressed.
Except for the three very important things – SRK’s good looks, good looks and good looks, there wasn’t anything for me in the movie. I did understand the hype, I felt Pathaan’s success was because of the hand of divine, a triumph for love in the times of hate.
SRK has given us Dear Zindagi, Swades, Chak De India and Raees. Or romances like Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge, Kabhi Khushi Kabhi Gham, Kuch Kuch Hota Hai and, more recently, Dilwale, where he opened his arms and jumped right into our hearts. I am saying in the lowest possible decibel, I didn’t like the movie.
For me, a few smiles, the flashing of the dimples, the subtle adabs (greetings) and some nice songs were paisa vasool (worth the money).
I loved the atmosphere in the movie hall, I liked the fact that people were making a statement. They had come for love and were defying and denouncing hate.
I liked that SRK had not followed the much in-vogue norm of ‘making villains of a community and a neighbouring country’, the selling formula. Even if Pakistan was the villain, it was not the people, just a few rogue generals. Except for the reference to Article 370 , which for me as a Kashmiri is still contentious, I found the movie much saner than some of the recent hits.
But of course, it didn’t quench my thirst for an SRK movie.
So when people asked if I was going for Jawan, I wasn’t sure I would.
There were no haters to prove wrong this time. The posters spoke of dishum dishum (action) as the genre and honestly, I didn’t like the bandaged or the bald look of SRK. For me, he is the suave and sexy NRI, wearing the ‘cool’ chain on his fluorescent hoodies. I was okay waiting for its OTT release.
But a few days after the release, I wanted to change my plans. The movie reviews told me it is an answer to all my grudges and disappointments I had as a fan, despite my unflinching love for him.
I always wanted SRK to be like Meryl Streep but he refused and even said our expectations were unfounded. He claimed that “he didn’t understand the situation enough so he would want to keep quiet and not add to the noise”. I wanted to tell him that his words wouldn’t be noise, it would be power. I wanted to tell him that journalists might not be the same as they were years ago, but that doesn’t forgo our responsibility as a citizen.
Yes, I wanted him to be like Robert De Niro, not that I wanted him to call someone “stupid”. I surely didn’t want him to waste a priceless answer and talk about the then US president to David Letterman while choosing to remain mum about his own country.
I looked for a tweet after every rape, every lynching, every hate crime, every lopsided judgement, every attack on students, but there was nothing.
Over the years, however, I did realise that his silence was better. Except for a few selfies, he hasn’t done much to stand on the side of power. I had realised, or maybe wanted to believe, that his silence was his protest. As a Kashmiri, I have understood the meaning of silences in the last five years. Maybe my silence let me empathise with his.
So while I, like millions of his other fans, wanted to go to the movie theatre just to make a statement when Pathaan was released, the superstar did not outrightly want to make one. In the famous Kolkata event he did talk about the toxicity of social media and said ‘how positive people are sitting alive’, the message just fell a little short.
However, with Jawan, SRK seems to have finally realised that after his fans, it is his turn to make a statement and that too a big one. Whether it was his son’s arrest or whether he realised that no matter how quiet he remained, those who wanted to question his nationalism will continue to do so.
Or maybe because he realised that whatever he does, his name is Khan and he might not be a terrorist but he will always be questioned. Perhaps he simply found his voice because so many others had become voiceless.
But he has done it and how. The monologue in the climax of Jawan gave me goosebumps. Shahrukh has spoken and at the correct platform. He has spoken through his art and his platform is the 70 feet screen with hundreds of people watching, with no jingoistic anchors there to label him anti-national and no unruly politician asking him to go to Pakistan.
When he talks about democracy and the power of the vote, he tells you to question those who want to rule you for the next five years. When he says to ask them “tum mere liye kya karoge (what will you do for me)“, he is throwing an open challenge, not just to those who want votes in the name of caste, creed and religion, but also to those who claim otherwise and end up agreeing to the same politics as ‘that is the pulse of the people’.
He wants you to think about it when you leave the theatre and are driving home with your family. He wants you to ask the politicians what they will do to bridge the divide which has been driving a wedge between communities for years.
He wants you to ask if the names of gods will still be used as a war cry against a community. What will you do to make sure clothes don’t define a person and identity is beyond the length of a beard?
What will they do to make sure a boycott call of communities doesn’t become a letter officially submitted to a police station? He wants you to ask them, how will they ensure thousands of farmers don’t have to stay on roads to be heard? He wants you to ask them how they will ensure we don’t find bodies floating around Ganga ghats if another pandemic hits us. He wants you to ask them what they will do to ensure Olympic medalists are not dragged on the streets of the national capital.
Let us not belittle his message by saying when he lifts his hand, he is asking people to vote for the party with that symbol. The message is as much for that party as it is for anyone else.
When someone praised the monologue on X (formerly Twitter), he said that he didn’t want to give spoilers by talking about the contents. But SRK insisted “Desh ki bhalaai ke liye sab spoilers maaf (If it’s for the wellbeing of the country, spoilers are allowed). Everyone should exercise their right to vote intelligently and responsibly’’.
SRK, I hear you. And so does everyone else.
Toufiq Rashid is a journalist who has covered the Kashmir conflict, health and wellbeing for top Indian newspapers for nearly two decades. She now works at @Pixstory.