Tigmanshu Dhulia recalled how Shah Rukh Khan used to take naps on the floor of the bus during lunch break on the sets of Dil Se.
Not only on screen, Bollywood superstar Shah Rukh Khan knows how to sweep us off our feet in real life as well with his wit and humble nature. Recently, filmmaker Tigmanshu Dhulia, in an interview, walked down the memory and narrated an instance of King Khan’s humility from the sets of Mani Ratnam’s Dil Se (1998). Dhulia worked as a dialogue-writer on that film.
The ‘Haasil’ director told Mashable India, “He is such a humble person. I can’t even tell you. I could see this even during Dil Se, and he was already a big star at that time”.
He then recalled how SRK would sleep on the floor of the bus during lunch break hours in the absence of vanity vans when they were shooting for the Mani Ratnam film in Ladakh.
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Tigmanshu recalled, “When we were shooting in Ladakh with Mani sir, you would just travel on the roads, and he would decide this is where he wanted to shoot. So during lunch, there were no vanity vans or anything. In the bus we were travelling in, the passage where people walk, Shah Rukh would take a nap there during lunch for 30 minutes. But we (crew members) had things on the bus, so we would keep going in and out. Sometimes, we would go over him to get to a jacket or something, but he never objected to anything.”
He continued, “He never said no one can enter the bus when I am sleeping. He could have done that. He is the star of the film. If he wants to sleep for 30 minutes, he should get that time undisturbed, but that never happened.”
Years later, Tigmanshu got an opportunity to share screen space with Shah Rukh Khan on Anand L Rai’s Zero (2018). The filmmaker narrated how the Bollywood star would make sure that everyone on the sets was comfortable and had lunch.
He shared, “During Zero, it was his home production, and there were many other actors there. Shah Rukh was so respectful towards everyone. He would pick chairs for everyone and ask them if they had lunch. These are his values). It’s his manners that make him great.”
After Zero‘s flop show, Shah Rukh Khan took a four-year break and returned to the big screen with a bang with two successive blockbusters- Siddharth Anand’s Pathaan and Atlee’s Jawan.
