Shah Rukh Khan had promised wife Gauri he’ll only work on TV, decided to ‘be a superstar’ after mother’s death: Viveck Vaswani

Shah Rukh Khan lost his mother due to complications of diabetes, way before he made his debut in films and eventually attained superstardom.

A star was born, because of a death. Actor, writer and producer Viveck Vaswani, one of the oldest friends of Shah Rukh Khan from the film industry, has shared how the actor’s dream to attain stardom took roots in the early 90s.

In his initial years in the film industry, Shah Rukh didn’t have a house of his own and would live with Vaswani. The actor-producer revealed that while he was producing films, Shah Rukh was far detached from the big screen, and even wife Gauri Khan didn’t want him to act in films.

Until his mother died in 1990, completely altering Shah Rukh’s life–and career. In an interview with Connect FM Canada, Vaswani shared the early morning phone call Shah Rukh made to him, immediately after he landed in Mumbai after his mother’s funeral.

“I said yes, he said no you’ll have to swear it, because if you are not going to make it then I won’t come to your house, which I think was very sweet because where would he have gone that early in the morning! We put the bags in the living room, went to The President hotel, which is just next door. We sat at the coffee shop, which is where Raju Ban Gaya Gentleman was born,” the producer said.

The Pathaan star has often spoken fondly of his mother, Lateef Fatima. In an interview with Simi Garewal, the superstar had recalled her death, detailing how it followed a similar pattern of how he lost his father. “I was shooting in Goa, and she had diabetes. When I came back from Goa, she had hurt her foot, and it kept spreading. When she was admitted to the hospital, she contracted septicemia. I wasn’t prepared, but I had done the same thing for my father. I was in the hospital with him, and slowly he went away. I was not prepared for her to die. I never used to pray, but when she was in the ICU, and she was getting a breathing attack, I went down to the parking lot of a hospital and for the first time, I prayed.

“I was told to pray 6000 times, and that she won’t have pain. I did, and the doctor told me that she was going. I have a belief that you die when you are satisfied with life. So I went down and started giving her worries, I said I won’t be happy, and told her that I’ll be a bad person, mistreat her daughter. But she had a beautiful look in her eyes, which said, let me go, I need to rest, and she went,” he had said.