"POWER OF LOVE" {SRK MARRIES GAURI}

Fauji was being watched by the entire nation and his character, Abhimanyu Rai, had become a household favourite. Once, Shah Rukh even turned up at Gauri's birthday party as Abhimanyu. Gauri's father had dismissed his as a Dilip Kumar wannabe. However, he would later recall one episode of Fauji, when he'd been delighted with the actor.

But Shah Rukh was soon beginning to move away from Fauji and Delhi. Offers had begun to come in for television serials from Bombay. Circus happened, so did Maya Memsaab and Ahamak - The Idiot. Films were in the offing when Shah Rukh's mother fell ill. After her death, a devastated Shah Rukh decided to shift base to Bombay and pursue a career in films.

Later, when the wedding plans were in full swing, Shah Rukh would speak of the sheer relief of being able to call up at her home and ask for her. "This was a fantastic beginning. After knowing her for eight years, I could finally call and ask for her. I could call her from any booth, any time. That I could ask for her was itself a very big change." says Shah Rukh.

Shah Rukh would spend more than a hundred rupees daily. But the talks were never mushy. "Invariably, we would end up fighting because she didn't like the fact that I was here. What are you doing there, which heroine - there were usual suspicions because you were in a field that was considered from the outside as a f*** up." By then, the cast and crew of Raju Ban Gaya Gentleman and all his friends in Bombay knew about Gauri. "I'd thought that if I moved to Bombay, I would take her with me. So in a certain sense, the decision to join films also hastened my marriage." recalls Shah Rukh.

Gauri, however, was getting increasingly upset. There were either long silences or quarrels on the phone. "What is it Gauri? What is it that you want? Should I stop working?" Shah Rukh constantly asked. "You left me," was the refrain. There was only one solution. "Marry me and we will come here," said Shah Rukh, to which Gauri replied in her characteristic monosyllable, "Okay."

Now came the time to break the news to Gauri's family. It was decided that Shah Rukh would come to Delhi and meet her parents. But the first to meet him were her maternal uncle and aunt, to whom he declared his undying love for Gauri and the need to get married. Till this point, Gauri's family didn't even know that she'd been dating him; they only had a vague idea that one of her friends was an actor. That is, except for her hockey-playing brother, who had, in their younger years, threatened to rough up Shah Rukh on the field. Benny remembers going to meet her brother at Panchsheel Club. "Shah Rukh said we have to impress this guy, for he was the brother. And the brother was talking about guns and knives and acting a little tough,' he says.

Gauri's parents, though, didn't see it quite the same way. Gauri would say, "Shah Rukh, you don't know my parents. You take things so lightly." Looking back, Shah Rukh wonders at the audacity with which he'd planned his life then. Here's the replay:

"I told her parents that I wanted to marry her. And I was working.

'What do you do?'

'I act...in films...my movies are coming out.'

An awkward silence."

Gauri's parents, Ramesh and Savita, were also worried about the cultural differences between the two. Ramesh kept wondering where he'd gone wrong with Gauri. He'd had so much confidence in her, and she'd proved his faith in her by excelling in everything. And now this? Gauri's mother showed her feelings in no uncertain way, taking a firm stand against the wedding.

In Bombay, Chamatkar was in progress. One afternoon, Shah Rukh was called upon to perform his acrobatic dancing, aided by the 'ghost' of Naseeruddin Shah, for the song 'Dekho, dekho, yeh hai chamatkar'. At the same time in Delhi, Gauri's mother swallowed a handful of sleeping tablets. She survived miraculously. But Gauri couldn't stop weeping on the phone.

That's when Gauri and Shah Rukh decided to take some drastic measures. They called Gauri's parents from her aunt's home and told them that they'd got married. Her parents really blew their top then. But the truth was that they'd merely registered for a court marriage and the 30-day notice had been pinned up in court.

Shah Rukh was determined to get Gauri's parents approval within these 30 days. When he showed up at Gauri's home later, funereal atmosphere took him aback. "I could really understand what they were going through. But I tried my best, talked to them and they finally realised that I was not going to get out of their lives, and they would have to accept the relationship."

Finally, with her parent's consent, an Arya Samaj wedding was fixed for October 25,1992. The court marriage took place a couple of months earlier, on August 26. Every morning, several Islamic organisations would shout slogans outside his house. In the evenings, Hindu extremists would occupy this space.

The Muslim wedding was a quite affair, in which Gauri's name was given as Ayesha. "We have not told this to many people,"Shah Rukh grins. Then there was a court marriage, a two-minute affair, with Shah Rukh's friends and Gauri's uncle and aunt as witnesses.

The auspicious time for the wedding was drawing near when Shah Rukh received a panic-stricken call. The car that was supposed to pick up Gauri from the beauty parlour had broken down. The groom rushed to pick up his bride, deposited her home and rushed back to his horse. It was strange baarat. Halfway through, the bridegroom got off the horse and began to dance with baaratis. Then the crowd parted as a huge elephant sauntered in. His friends now began to push the bridegroom up the elephant. It was a tough climb, but he got there eventually. When the baarat reached the venue, they found an army band playing songs from Deewana and Raju ban gaya Gentleman - a tribute to Shah Rukh from father-in-law. By the time of the reception, his mother-in-law, too, had thawed enough to compliment hm on his tuxedo.

D REAL LOVE-STORY OF KING KHAN!

LOVE IN THE TIMES OF STRESS

It was 1984, TAG was performing at Loreto Convent, a school for girls in New Delhi. Watching from the darkened auditorium, Gauri Chibba, a ninth grader who was dressed like all others in regimented blue and white, caught her first glimpse of the man who would be a superstar. A thin guy with long hair, she thought Shah Rukh looked every bit like the singer Prince. Do we take that as a compliment? Gauri hastens to explain: "This mean I thought him quite ugly."

She would forget all about him till she again met him at a party. Once again, Shah Rukh left her quite unimpressed. So it wasn't love at first sight. "I didn't like him at all actually," Gauri remembers.

It was at one of the parties at the club that gauri had her second encounter with Shah Rukh. While they were being introduced, she remembered where she'd seen him before. Shahrukh, too, insists that this wasn't his first sight of Gauri. He declares that he'd first fallen in love with an "amazing pair of legs" that was walking down the streets of Delhi.

Luckily, Vivek Khushalani, his friend from the C-gang, still has a vivid memory of the evening they'd walked into the party. Each one of them immediately trained their eyes on a different girl. And Shah Rukh, he looked straight at Gauri.

They continued to meet at the club and one day, Shah Rukh sent her a message through a mutual friend that he would like to 'see' her. But outings remained a group affair till a couple of years later. This is how long it took for their friendship to turn into a romance, "Slowly, very slowly, our relationship matured into something else," Gauri says.

By then, Gauri had moved to Modern School, where the "terribly intelligent" Shah Rukh motivated her to perform better. She would later graduate with honours in History from Lady Shri Ram College for women (incidentally, the same campus on which Shah Rukh had first auditioned for a play).

Shah Rukh says .. Umm...I just remember telling her I love you. I remember I dropped her to her house and told her Iam going to marry you. I didn't even wait for her response - just drove off."

By the time their relationship changed from a close friendship to a comfortable romance, Shah Rukh was acting in two television series directed by Lekh Tondon. ?This meant he had less and less time to spend with Gauri. In the meantime, their were changes taking place in Gauri's life too. She'd graduated and had joined a course in fashion designing. But, more and more, she was growing apprehensive about the future of their relationship. She knew her parents wouldn't take kindly to a Muslim boyfriend. And she also hated the fact that Shah Rukh was an actor.

This intense disapproval did not stop Shah Rukh from acting, but he did try his best to make sure that Gauri never found out about it. It almost failed once. He was recognised in a play by one of Gauri's friends, Shivani. That day, Shah Rukh spent hours trying to convince Gauri that she was wrong; that her friend must have seen someone who looked like him.

Gauri was close to an emotional breakdown. On her 19th birthday, Shah Rukh decorated his room with balloons and filled it up with presents. She came, took one look at the room and burst into tears. The next day, she disappeared. Shah Rukh was frantic. Several days passed before he was able to find out that she'd left for Bombay. He didn't know what to do. He was brooding with some of his friends in his room one day when his mother walked in with a bundle of notes - Rs. 10000 in cash. Go to Bombay and bring back the girl you love, she said.

Within a few days, Shah Rukh and Benny were in Bombay, but without a clue as to where to start the hunt. The first two nights were spend in considerable luxury at Sunjoy's friend, Raman Mukherjee's apartment. "We were just getting used to the brown sahib lifestyle when on the third day, the guy comes in and says listen, my parents are coming to stay and you have to get out. The third night was spent at VT station.

The next morning, they sneaked into 1900s at Taj (then under renovation, making it easier for the boys to get in) and washed up. After this, they healed for Marine Drive. "That's where Shah Rukh said his famous lines; I swear he said this: 'One day I will rule this city.' It had been a bad night; neither of us had slept at a railway station before. We were both very shaken by the experience," remembers Benny.

Then they began to search, especially at the beaches, for Gauri loved the sea. But they were getting nowhere. Their money was running out, which meant that it was time to go home. On the last day, Shah Rukh even had to sell his camera for them to get by.

That day, a friendly Sikh taxi driver told them about Aksa beach. By the time they reached Aksa, they had only Rs 20 between them. Their disappointment mounted. Then they heard of another beach nearby, the Gorai. They took the ferry across. The two stopped people, describing Gauri, explaining that she was their friend and they'd lost her. By late afternoon, it was clear that this was not working.

On their way back, they spotted a small private beach. On a impulse, Shah Rukh asked the rickshaw driver to take them there. "And there she was. Standing in the water, wearing a T-shirt. She came over and we hugged, and cried. It was then that I realised I was being unreasonably possessive. I also realised that no one could ever love Gauri the way I loved her and that gave me tremendous confidence."

WHY SHAH RUKH KHAN DID GUDDU?

I didn't want to do Guddu initially. The producer, Prem Lalwani, had written a story about a 12-year-old boy. But he told me, 'I feel you are Guddu and I want to narrate the story to you.'I told him,'I know Iam good but no stretch of imagination can I play a 12-year-old boy.' The man then said that he would change it to a college boy. While he was narrating the story, he started crying. This 6'4", rich, NRI businessman crying was a sight I could not handle. Then he said,'it has happened to my son. My son is modern and he didn't believe that one could cure a fatal disease by believing in God. I did and now he is a cured man.'

I would not have done the film if it was given to me as a written script, but when I saw this man and his belief, I accepted the film. I can imagine what he went through because I've gone through a similar experience with my parents."