AN UNUSUAL AWARD FOR SHAH RUKH KHAN
Shah Rukh Khan has set a new trend in India and not just in the film industry.

Many actors and other achievers have received the Padma awards. Some have received the Dada Saheb Phalke award. A few have received the Oscar.. Filmare awards are no big deal– after all that madrassi actor Kamalahasan has received it 16 times. If a non-good looking madrassi can get it that many times it can’t be a great award. So also the President’s award that has the added issue of a national controversy. By the time the issue is resolved some of the awardees have remarried three times!

Now even statues are passé with even non actors like Mayawati erecting several statues of herself. The ‘Sir’ title is not given to Indian actors –they are ineligible in terms of our rules.
And in Tamil cinema the ‘Sir’ title has been devalued by everyone calling everyone else as ‘Saaaar’. Shah Rukh will hate to be told ‘Arise Saaaar Khan’ by the Queen.

It was a master stroke on the part of an obscure South Korean organization to award the BLACK BELT to Shah Rukh Khan in recognition of his Karate arts display in bollywood movies. Khan has told the organizers that he wishes to receive the award soon before his double claims the award. The double has told my detective friend Alphonso that he will consult a lawyer to ascertain the feasibility of claiming the award considering that it is he who risks his life pumping villains with karate chops, jumping from the 20th storey of a building or from the roof of the Petronas Tower in Kuala Lumpur to rescue the heroine while the Khan gets the taalis. What is worse, the double cried over Alphonso’s shoulders, he, the double, does not even get to hug the now relieved heroine triumphantly– such meaty scenes and the accompanying duet are reserved for Khan and the heroine. ‘It is an unfair film world’ he sighed.

But there is an even more serious objection from a very powerful politician from Bihar. He is also consulting his lawyer on the feasibility of filing a case against the organizers. He will not challenge Khan for fear of losing the Muslim votes that he has assiduously cultivated in his role of a leader of secular forces.
He told his lawyer that it was he who deserved the Black Belt.
‘Jee netaji how can we establish this in a court?’ asked the lawyer cowering with fear at what might be construed as disrespect to a neta who was reclining in his thaila handing a haystack to a buffalo as TV cameras zoomed in on him for the latest scoop. ‘Aray bhai from tomorrow I will keep a tape recorder and a camera on my bed side and prove it’ said the neta.
The lawyer from Patna Law School was puzzled wondering if the neta had confused ‘martial’ with ‘marital’ arts. ‘ A million times my wife has cursed me for being the world’s biggest kharrate expert’ said the neta.

The now relieved lawyer wiped his brows, shewed away a few flies and returned to his chambers to check on the question that may assume great political and legal importance in India—is kharrate or snoring a martial art under the relevant sections of Indian law?
K.R.RAVI