The SRK and Sushant Connect
Shah Rukh Khan’s iconic scene from the film 'Dilwale Dulhania Le Jaayenge' where he catches hold of Kajol and yanks her into the moving train in the climax of the film Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge released 25 years ago is a memory etched in everyone’s minds. Most Bollywood stars have even shared memes of the said picture recently with sanitisers in their hand when the Covid 19 pandemic broke out.
It is no secret that Sushant Singh Rajput admired Shah Rukh Khan’s journey from being a television actor to a huge Bollywood star and often aspired to emulate him Shah Rukh and Sushant met on several occasions and have shared a great bond as well.
And it is rather poetic that Sushant’s swansong in Bollywood Dil Bechara – which will release on July 24 - 40 days after the actor died by suicide on June 14 has a scene that is a replica of DDLJ.
Albeit there is a twist. In the original scene where Kajol boards the train in the film 'Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge' and Shah Rukh Khan gives her a helping hand in boarding the train the seats are numbered from 41-90 as is evident from the picture of the compartment and which is quite the right number. In 'Dil Bechara' however the numbering of the seats has been reversed from 90-41 in the compartment which is never the case. Sushant Singh Rajput and Sanjana Sanghi play leads in this tragic love story which is a Hindi adaptation of John Green’s book, 'The Fault In Our Stars' which was also made into a film in Hollywood starring Shailene Woodley and Ansel Elgort.
Ostensibly both the characters have their days numbered and the scene is rather poetic as well.
While there are some more scenes where Sushant replicated Shah Rukh Khan’s iconic open arm posture in a scene while introducing himself as 'Rajkumar Immanuel Junior' and some other romantic scenes with the heroine of the Mukesh Chhabra directed film Dil Bechara which has him emulate the pose a few times over again.
Shah Rukh Khan and Sushant Singh Rajput’s fans soon went into an overdrive after they watched the trailer of the film and posted stories about how Shah Rukh and Sushant had so much in common and how. In fact it was rather strange to note that Shah Rukh Khan’s fans in fact had turned Sushant’s performance into a tribute to the star and trended it as one.
A few fans of Sushant were not amused by the ‘tribute’ part of it and pointed to a recent viral video where Shah Rukh Khan and Shahid Kapoor in an award show ragged Sushant at an award function a few years ago. While Sushant had taken it rather sportingly, Sushant’s fans were angry and perhaps still have a lot of angst left in them not to accept this as a tribute.
Interestingly the old line, “Ek tha raja, ek thi rani… dono mar gaye khatam kahani!” was used in both Dil Bechara and one of Sushant’s earlier releases Raabta. Strangely enough the raja of our real-life story died before the kahaani ended!