Shah Rukh Khan is 50 – a fact that is hard to stomach for those who remember him as an earnest and charming young man in Army fatigues in the television series Fauji.
Before he conquered the large screen, Khan started winning hearts on the smaller one.
Indians who grew up on Doordarshan will remember him as Army cadet Abhimanyu Rai from Fauji, broadcast in 1988. Khan’s later persona – cocky, irreverent, romantic and fundamentally decent – was initially seeded in the immensely popular Fauji, which looked at a bunch of young men training for a career in the Army.
Dil Dariya, directed by movie and television director Lekh Tandon, would have been Khan’s debut if the television series had been completed on time. Dil Dariya, about neighbouring Hindu and Sikh families in Punjab, was telecast after Fauji, but it was Tandon who first successfully persuaded the Delhi actor to appear in the series. Tandon said about Khan, “It is his destiny. It was the right moment, the right hunch, and Nature running her course that made it happen.”
Khan also appeared in Circus, directed by Aziz Mirza and Kundan Shah and shown on Doordarshan between 1989 and 1990. Revolving around a circus troupe and starring Khan as the owner’s son who tries to revive its fortunes, the series sealed Khan’s popularity on the small screen.
In 1992, Khan made his feature debut with Deewana. He hasn't looked back since. He returned to television to host its third season of Kaun Banega Crorepati in 2007, but poor ratings forced the show's production company to go back to the original host, Amitabh Bachchan. Khan had evidently outgrown the medium that first nurtured him.