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."