Reincarnation of Shah Rukh Khan

Bollywood’s latest box office hit ‘Om Shanti Om’ has everything going for it. Here’s a checklist:

A mega star like Shah Rukh Khan in a double role; a fabulous-looking Deepika Padukone in her debut role (umm, debut double role); a talented supporting cast that includes Kirron Kher, Shreyas Talpade and Arjun Rampal; a great director who understands her mega star like no other director (Farah Khan); hot musical numbers to make you want to get up and dance in the aisles; and a host of Bollywood celebrities (30 or so in number) putting on a show for the mega star and the audience – first at a mock-Filmfare awards ceremony, and then in the film’s title song, ‘Om Shanti Om’.

Shah Rukh Khan even bares his chest for the first time on screen, showing off his six-pack abs (looks like he’s been working out recently), sending women and, perhaps, some of the men in the audience swooning into oblivion.

What ‘Om Shanti Om’ does not have is a plot – a storyline – that its audience can make sense of. That’s because ‘Om Shanti Om’ is essentially a film about unrequited love, and unexpected death (30 years ago), which leaves its audience in utter grief and misery. In order to release this grief, the film, in typical Bollywood style with happy endings, is carried forward 30 years to present day when our hero makes amends for his lost love. Thus, ‘Om Shanti Om’ becomes a film about reincarnation, which is not always easy to handle, even by inexperienced directors.

Anyway, director Farah Khan has a bash at it, going back to 1970s Bollywood in the first-half of the film, where a perfectly blossoming love story suddenly comes to an end in treachery and murder, with the death of both our hero (Shah Rukh Khan) and our heroine (Deepika Padukone). But, to keep the story going, in the second half, we are transported to the present day, where our reincarnated hero in his new avatar as a Bollywood superstar (Shah Rukh Khan, again), upon realising who he really is (in the film), plots to avenge the murder of his previous-life’s love.

This is where the film’s storyline weakens, and the present-day hero’s realisation of his reincarnated self is handled rather amateurishly. But then, this is probably a minor point for Bollywood films and Shah Rukh fans. After all, ‘Om Shanti Om’ is a box office hit and provides three hours of great entertainment.