I'm Sorry, Mr. S.R.K. but that was a Cheap Publicity Stunt!

16th Aug,2009, 8am:A normal,socially aware Indian is in a holiday mood(thanks to the pleasant coincidence of Independence day preceded by Janmashtmi Holiday and succeeded by a Sunday). Sitting in his living room, he takes out the rubber band from the newspaper and unrolls it, only to be encountered by these headlines.





What would your reaction be? The natural answers would be anger, disgust, pain, patriotism, revenge and their synonyms but the most important one would be "Sympathy", wouldn't it? If you've read till this point I request you to go ahead and read the ENTIRE post because I have some evidence of backing up my views.

So, SRK, in his own words, was "frisked" at the Newark airport. I'm sure he meant it as a verb and the dictionary meaning for "frisk" as a verb goes like this:"the act of searching someone for concealed weapons or illegal drugs". So, first of all, there's no big deal in anyone being "frisked" at an airport. We all are "frisked" before entering multiplexes, malls, Metro trains and, of course, airports,right? SRK has repeateadly alleged that it wasn't a normal "security check" but it was frisking. I'm not sure of his vocabulary level but my limited knowledge of it tells me that the security personnel are being paid to frisk passengers, aren't they? After all, they have to ensure that no one is carrying weapons or drugs with him.

Secondly, Mr. SRK alleges that the checking took more time than normal and the personnel deliberately made him wait for two hours. The reason for this was mentioned very briefly in one of the newspapers but most of them just carried SRK's side and they never bothered to get the entire picture. Now that the incident seems to have been forgotton by the media, I decided to do some research on the facts and here is what I came up with.

The real picture:

Mr. Shah Rukh Khan was detained at the airport because his baggage had not arrived due to the airline's fault. Hence, he was made to wait until it arrived and was checked. I read it somewhere that the airport officials have claimed that the period of detention was exactly 66 minutes. However, I'm not sure of that so let us assume that it was 2 hours, as came out in the papers. Can someone please tell me where the airport officials went wrong if they detained a person for 2 hours because of the fault of the airline? Obviously, they could not have let him walk away without the baggage and then check it later. The other point of contention is regarding the popularity of the icon. I would excuse a security officer in Newark in the U.S. if he doesn't recognize a person who is such an icon back in India (just like people in Holland didn't recognize Sachin Tendulkar on the streets when he went there for a 3 match series)and frankly, even if he did, he would still have gone through the entire security procedure. Hence, it wouldn't have made a difference anyway. Airport security for International flights is a major issue and sometimes we will have incidents such as frisking of former President APJ Abdul Kalam(more due to the negligence of government in pre-informing the alirline) or an SRK.

It is unjust for anyone to pass judgement on an entire community and the fact that 9/11 has really changed the way Muslims are being treated around the world is really sad. In an ideal world, it should not happen and everyone should be treated equally. The sad part is that suspects of all the major terrorists activities around the world, be it serial blasts in Delhi, in London, in Madrid or the 9/11 itself belong to the same community and that is the conundrum. This is one incident in the U.S. but it does happen day in and day out to the common Muslim here in India as well. And clearly, it'll never happen to SRK here coz everybody knows him. So, before blaming the U.S. we have to set our houses in order. That said, the best we can do is to cooperate with security people all around. There's nothing to fear when we are right and when we demand a terrorism free world, the least we can do is to cooperate with the security agencies around the world rather than crib and complain.

And, Mr. SRK wants to frisk Angelina Jolie when she comes to India.... its fine if he was joking but there won't be many who would see it purely as a joke and the message conveyed looks more like targeting people from the U.S. in return,which is not the best way to respond.

Out of this entire incident, SRK has managed to cash in on the patriotic mood of the nation in promoting his upcoming movie,which is based on the same topic(I don't even want to name it). No matter how much he keeps on saying the now-familiar pharases such as "I don't need publicity", "I don't need these things to promote my movie",etc, fact of the matter is that publicity always helps and there's no limit to it. How can we forget that this is the same actor who would go to T20 Cricket World Cup in South Africa wearing a black shirt engraved with "Om Shanti Om" in golden colours prior to release of his movie? He would keep taking on an Amitabh Bachchan at an award ceremony or make comments on Amar Singh, Salman Khan and anyone else for that matter.

SRK no longer the icon he used to be for me:I grew up watching and liking SRK movies and I've always been his fan. However, such acts from him in the recent past has maligned his image and I now see him as a conceited, arrogant egotist. Success has got to his head and one such incident was prior to the IPL when Sunil Gavaskar criticised the Kolkata Knight Riders' "multiple captaincy theory". SRK pitched in for his coach(which was justified) by saying that I would stand by the decision of Mr. Buchanan(again, hats off to you for showing faith in your coach prior to such an important tournament) and those who disagree with it can buy their own franchisees and implement their ideas on them(perfectly unjust). Probably he tried to show that he has got the money to buy a franchisee and Mr. Gavaskar hasn't. For your information, sir, the day Sunil Gavaskar wants to buy an IPL Franchisee he won't run short of financers. Why does he forget that his domain is movies and he should not interfere so vociferously in subjects out of that domain. And taking on someone of the stature of Gavaskar was really uncalled for. Lately, he has been projecting himself as the "good face" of Islam, which is again, a creditable act because not many people have had the time and guts to do that. Aamir Khan hasn't done badly at all in this industry and the reason I value the person so much is for the way in which he does his work and raises his voice when he needs to(The Narmada cause). I loved it when he had a banter at SRK regarding the name of his dog in his blog. May be it was undignified but when we talk of SRK, we no longer need to be dignified. This country has got its hands full of crisis at present and we don't need gimmicks like these from our revered stars to distract us, do we??