Shah Rukh to recite poetry for Samar Khan

Mumbai, Feb 12 (IANS) Whether it's Karan Johar, Farah Khan or Vivek Vaswani, Shah Rukh Khan is known to go out of his way for his close and long-lasting friends. It therefore comes as no surprise that he is going to recite poetry in Samar Khan's next film, "Shaurya".

The superstar featured in Samar Khan's directorial debut "Kuch Meetha Ho Jaye", a candyfloss episodic love story, three years ago.

"I consider Shah Rukh my good luck charm. He had made an appearance as himself at the end of 'Kuch Meetha Ho Jaye'. Now for my new film 'Shaurya', Shah Rukh will be doing something he has never done. He'll be reciting poetry," Samar Khan told IANS.

"The film is about the court martial of a man accused of a terrible war crime. But it's not 'A Few Good Men'. We tend to bring that up in my movie's context because it's the only film in living memory about a court martial."

Why poetry when other friends want him as item boy, for instance, in Soham Shah's "Kaal"?

"I wanted my writer Jaideep Sarkar to write a theme poem that describes my film's mood. He came up with 'Shaurya kya hai'. The poem captures the essence of my film. Namely, the biases and prejudices prevalent in our society, which tend to isolate and persecute communities and individuals," said Samad Khan.

"Jaideep's lines were extraordinarily lucid. I needed a voice and a presence that could make those lines weighty and still accessible to the man in the remotest corner of the audience," he added.

Samad Khan flew down to Goa to speak to SRK about the poem. "Shah Rukh, of course, being Shah Rukh, agreed immediately. He wanted to record the poem on his laptop then and there. But I wanted him to do it properly in a studio."

The poem by Shah Rukh will be part of the "Shaurya" soundtrack.

"Adnan Sami has done the music. And we'll be giving Shah Rukh's poem a musical interpretation for the album," said Samad Khan, as he readies his film for an April release.

"The theme of the poem is: we need to find the courage within us to fight injustice and prejudice. 'Shaurya' is the film I wanted to make first but didn't have the courage and the vision to handle as my first film."

The whole team has made the endeavour easier for the director by backing him to the hilt.

"When you've creative people like scriptwriter Jaideep Sarkar, dialogue writer Aparna Malhotra (actor Pavan Malhotra's wife) and a dream-cast like Rahul Bose, Deepak Dobriyal and Seema Biswas, you've nothing to worry about."

"Shaurya" goes into an army backdrop.

"We've seen many films of Chetan Anand saab and J.P. Dutta saab with an army backdrop. But they went straight into the war zone. Since I had spent three years of my life in the National Defence Academy I wanted to make a film about life in the army without going into war."

The buzz is that "Shaurya" is inspired by Rob Reiner's 1992 court-martial drama "A Few Good Men".

Samad Khan shrugs off the charge.

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