<p>I heard Shah Rukh Khan announced to his fans on his 59th birthday that he had quit smoking. Rumour had it that he sometimes used to smoke up to 100 cigarettes a day. A chain-smoker, so to speak. But wait a minute. Hadn’t he announced the same just before his 50th birthday too, almost a decade ago? Nevertheless, it got me thinking of my encounter with the superstar about two decades ago. Nothing to do with cigarettes per se, but…</p>.<p>I had got lucky that day. The lifestyle magazine that I wrote for had fixed an appointment with SRK’s team for an interview with the superstar at the Taj Mahal Palace Hotel in Mumbai, near the Gateway of India. I got assigned that job, primarily because I lived just five apartment blocks away. And since the appointment was fixed for late evening and everyone else on the editorial team lived too far away from the venue to want to stay back, even for SRK, I got the assignment. His cologne was being launched, and he was going to give his stamp of approval to it. We had been briefed that SRK had been involved in the process at every stage and that the cologne had hints of neroli, black pepper, Italian cypress, and myrtle, I think, and a lot more that I cannot remember. So, the cologne was all SRK.</p>.<p>I walked across to the Taj Mahal hotel that evening, along the waterfront, all set with my dictaphone (that’s what journalists used to record interviews/sound bites before the ubiquitous mobile phones appeared) and a list of questions that had been finalised at the magazine office earlier that day. I needn’t have bothered with preparing the questions because SRK took the interview wherever he wanted to, lighting up a cigarette periodically. What had made me even more nervous interviewing SRK was the fact that a French television channel was shooting me interviewing SRK, something I had not been warned about. If I had known earlier, I would have been more formally attired. It was disconcerting, to say the least. More so because the interview was not going as planned!</p>.<p>He spoke about his student days in Hansraj College, his early acting experiences on television, Delhi life and so on. He was witty, humble, exuberant, and charming, puffing at a cigarette all along. But every time I’d try and steer the interview back towards the cologne or his present work, he’d digress. And so at one point I couldn’t stop myself from asking if his cologne also had the aroma of cigarette smoke integrated into it, since smoking was such a regular habit. Without skipping a beat, SRK replied laughingly, “But of course!”</p>
<p>I heard Shah Rukh Khan announced to his fans on his 59th birthday that he had quit smoking. Rumour had it that he sometimes used to smoke up to 100 cigarettes a day. A chain-smoker, so to speak. But wait a minute. Hadn’t he announced the same just before his 50th birthday too, almost a decade ago? Nevertheless, it got me thinking of my encounter with the superstar about two decades ago. Nothing to do with cigarettes per se, but…</p>.<p>I had got lucky that day. The lifestyle magazine that I wrote for had fixed an appointment with SRK’s team for an interview with the superstar at the Taj Mahal Palace Hotel in Mumbai, near the Gateway of India. I got assigned that job, primarily because I lived just five apartment blocks away. And since the appointment was fixed for late evening and everyone else on the editorial team lived too far away from the venue to want to stay back, even for SRK, I got the assignment. His cologne was being launched, and he was going to give his stamp of approval to it. We had been briefed that SRK had been involved in the process at every stage and that the cologne had hints of neroli, black pepper, Italian cypress, and myrtle, I think, and a lot more that I cannot remember. So, the cologne was all SRK.</p>.<p>I walked across to the Taj Mahal hotel that evening, along the waterfront, all set with my dictaphone (that’s what journalists used to record interviews/sound bites before the ubiquitous mobile phones appeared) and a list of questions that had been finalised at the magazine office earlier that day. I needn’t have bothered with preparing the questions because SRK took the interview wherever he wanted to, lighting up a cigarette periodically. What had made me even more nervous interviewing SRK was the fact that a French television channel was shooting me interviewing SRK, something I had not been warned about. If I had known earlier, I would have been more formally attired. It was disconcerting, to say the least. More so because the interview was not going as planned!</p>.<p>He spoke about his student days in Hansraj College, his early acting experiences on television, Delhi life and so on. He was witty, humble, exuberant, and charming, puffing at a cigarette all along. But every time I’d try and steer the interview back towards the cologne or his present work, he’d digress. And so at one point I couldn’t stop myself from asking if his cologne also had the aroma of cigarette smoke integrated into it, since smoking was such a regular habit. Without skipping a beat, SRK replied laughingly, “But of course!”</p>