Bollywood legend Shah Rukh Khan has said that he acts to avoid depression. He recently spoke with deep honesty about the personal tragedies that shaped his life, and fans have been reacting.
In an interview with Tehelka TV, the actor revealed that the loss of both his parents at a young age affected him and his sister, Shehnaz Lalarukh Khan, greatly.
According to him, his sister never cried or spoke when their parents died, but the way she kept looking into space made it obvious that it was a harsh reality that completely changed her world.
The moviestar stated that she never recovered from their father’s death, and things got worse when their mother passed a decade later.
“She didn’t cry, she didn’t speak, she just kept looking into space, and it just changed her world. Mashallah, now she’s better. She’s got some deficiencies. During the making of my film Dilwale Dulhania Le Jaayenge, she was again hospitalized, and they said she would not survive. I took her to Switzerland, got her treated there while I was shooting Tujhe Dekha To Ye Jaana Sanam.
But she’s never really recovered from the loss of our father, the suddenness of him passing away. And then it got compounded because my mother also expired ten years later. So we are what, in Islam, is called yateem, fatherless and motherless. And when I see her, especially in that time period from my father’s death to my mother’s death, she was highly qualified, she’s done MA LLB, very intelligent, just like my parents wanted her to be. But she couldn’t face the reality of losing her parents,” he said.
Admitting that he covers his sadness with the flamboyance of Bollywood, the filmmaker noted that he uses his acting profession to hide his pain and hurt.
Shah Rukh Khan concluded by saying that if he weren’t occupied with acting, he would be a very depressed man.
“And I somehow developed this sense of detachment, this false bravado, which I show in public, a sense of humor, and a lot of things that people think are flamboyant or very Bollywood-like, to cover up the sadness affecting my life and the fear of becoming like my sister. I love my sister, the way she is. She’s a much better person than I can ever be. I think she’s a child of God, very naïve and innocent.
My kids love her more than they love me and my wife, and I’m very glad she’s a part of our lives like this. But I don’t have the guts to be so simple, so hurt, so disturbed. So a part of me keeps on working around the clock, keeps on being happy in spite of the things that are said about me, makes a joke about the things that I do, but still keeps doing them because if I didn’t do that, I think I would be in the same state of potassium deficiency and depression. So, to avoid depression, I act,” he added.
