“I don't spend time in the company of men.” Shah Rukh Khan on how women have shaped his life...
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00:00You have to be gentler, you have to be sweeter,
00:02you have to be kinder, you can't sit with your legs open,
00:05and you have to, most of it, most of the definitions
00:08were subservient to the other gender.
00:14I try to speak in a larger perspective,
00:15not just in Indian context.
00:16I think it's the methods of oppressing women
00:20are different in different parts of the world,
00:22but the oppression is what is common.
00:24Categorizing people according to their biological differences
00:27is perhaps the oldest and the most primitive, so to say.
00:32I think we are so scared of things that happen to us
00:36which are not familiar, we as human beings,
00:38even as specialized corporators and everything,
00:40we are so keen on putting things into boxes
00:44so that we understand them, and somewhere,
00:47because we were not so familiar or we were threatened
00:50by this biologically different creature called woman,
00:53we quickly put definitions and categorize.
00:56You have to be gentler, you have to be sweeter,
00:59you have to be kinder, you can't sit with your legs open,
01:01and you have to, most of it, most of the definitions
01:05were subservient to the other gender.
01:08I think this categorization is going to fall through
01:11in some time.
01:12Have women played a very important role in your life,
01:15do you think?
01:16Actually, I,
01:20how do I say this without sounding wrong?
01:23I don't spend time in the company of men.
01:26I,
01:27Okay.
01:28I don't, I,
01:28I'm sorry, gentlemen, but you won't be spending time
01:32with me today.
01:33Yeah, well, I, like, you know, I was 14 when my father died,
01:37so I had a mother, my mother had no brothers,
01:40and her father was, had passed away,
01:42so I had three aunts and a grandmother,
01:45and then my mother passed away.
01:47I have a sister,
01:48who's unmarried, lives with me even now.
01:50Then I had a wife, and then I had a daughter,
01:53and in between these two, I started working with
01:56all the girls in the country, when I became an actor.
02:00So, I've not had the chance to be with men.
02:03Yeah.
02:04So, I am naturally inclined towards women.
02:06I'm choosing my words very, very carefully,
02:08unless they are misconstrued.
02:10Yes.
02:11And the whole idea is that women are the most important
02:15Yes.
02:16And the whole idea of what a woman is changed,
02:19when I started working with all the girls
02:21that I worked with.
02:23On the exterior, they're the most beautiful women,
02:26physically charming, attractive,
02:27they work harder than I do,
02:29they come four, five hours before I even land on the sets.
02:34They are, and I'll say this, I've seen it with my own eyes,
02:39or felt it, not seen it, maybe,
02:41they are somehow considered secondary
02:44in the scheme of things of this film world,
02:46it's a man's world.
02:48Like I said, they work harder at everything,
02:51and at the end of it all, when the film ends,
02:52I take all the credit and become
02:54the biggest superstar in the world.
02:55And they don't, genuinely, they don't get anything out of it.
02:58You know, they're just Shah Rukh Khan heroines.
03:00And the beauty of it is, that knowing how unfair it is,
03:07they have not reduced themselves and gone into victimhood.
03:11I think that's something that I love about
03:14most of the women that I've spent time with.
03:16There is no giving in to victimhood.
03:18They are not turning around and saying,
03:20you know, God, what I can do, this world,
03:22this is a man's world, and I do, none of them care.
03:26They have the courage, the bravery, the strength
03:29to realize that, you know what,
03:32this is how it's going right now,
03:33I do work harder than Shah Rukh,
03:35I am better than Shah Rukh, and I include my wife in it,
03:38my daughter in it, my sister in it,
03:40and all the girls I work with,
03:41and yes, all right, if he's sitting at Davos right now
03:44and giving the speech, we are not there.
03:47But they know they are the real strength,
03:49and because they know, I know that they know,
03:53I just love them and respect them so much.