When I got a call from Shah Rukh Khan

"Hi, this is Shah Rukh," said a voice on the other end of the phone. For five seconds, I thought it was a prank call. But I realised soon enough that this is the real deal. SRK, himself, is speaking to me.

This happened on Thursday, the day before Dear Zindagi released. I am a fresher in the "journalism business" and have been working for barely six months at India Today. My job is to write about movies and movie stars and everything in between. Sometimes, I review films which is pretty great because there are two things I can do without worrying much - one is watching films and the other is writing.

So, on Thursday, when I was tasked to write "something" about Dear Zindagi a day before its release, I did not have any idea regarding what to write (by this, I mean write something original, something fresh).

For one, most pieces on Shah Rukh Khan all over the internet, ahead of Dear Zindagi's release, have been on the same old line - Oh wow, look Shah Rukh is "acting" again. He had totally no idea what he was doing before but now, he is acting his age. So nice. The actor in Shah Rukh has returned. So on and so forth.

Now, this was an idea I did not believe in. In fact, I found such a shallow, myopic reading of Shah Rukh's career and choice of films to be stupid. But I kept my thoughts to myself. Never had the reason or inclination to write them down.

Hence, I figured why don't I write on what I feel about Shah Rukh Khan's choice of films, for real, and how he has come to a point where he is starring in Dear Zindagi.

So, I did that. I wrote on how the idea that mainstream commercial fare is a lesser kind of cinema is nonsense. I wrote on how Shah Rukh willingly submits himself to different filmmakers, for instance, a Mani Ratnam on the one hand and a Rohit Shetty on the other, simply because he believes in all kinds of cinema. I wrote all this in no more than 20 minutes and the piece went up on the internet around 1pm.

I did not expect the sky to fall because of my article like I never do about anything I write. I kept working on my next assignment when an hour and a half later, my colleague beside me said, "Dude Shah Rukh tweeted your piece."

Really the closest analysis of me doing what I do explained as I would want 2 but not articulate enough to do.Thk u. https://t.co/7IQyfAtqpP

— Shah Rukh Khan (@iamsrk) November 24, 2016

It took me a few seconds to register what had happened and I shouted, "Oh my god! Shah Rukh!" Soon, my editor got to know and so did the ones sitting around me that Shah Rukh Khan has retweeted a newly hired sub-editor's piece.

I asked my editor for a sutta break to, well, "deal with it" and she let me go for five minutes.

Outside office, as I sipped on tea along with the colleague who was the first to spot Shah Rukh's tweet, I got a call from an unknown number.

It was from Shah Rukh's office. The voice on the other end said, "Mr Khan will call you so, I am just giving you a heads up." I thought to myself different things at that point, starting from "this is ridiculous" to "this is surreal". Did my writing really mean that much to Shah Rukh Khan that he would find time from his busy schedule and call me a day before his big film will release?

Turns out it did. Somehow. Somehow, something I wrote connected with Shah Rukh and he called.

By the time the call came, half the floor knew that Shah Rukh Khan was going to call me. People were going crazy. I was feeling overwhelmed and a bit flustered from all the attention but mostly calm inside. Because I felt, alright, I guess these things happen.

The voice on the other end said, "Hi, this is Shah Rukh."

I said, "Hello sir."

The voice said, "Can I know how you pronounce your name?"

I replied. Shah Rukh, the 51-year-old's voice sounded extremely boyish, almost like a 30-year-old's, which is why I first thought that it must be a prank call.

But then, Shah Rukh kept speaking. And I listened. Alright, this was Him. This is him. Damn!

Then, after precisely two minutes, he hung up. My colleagues hounded me and jumped into my face, "Arey, Shah Rukh ne kya bola? Shah Rukh ne kya bola?"

I told them what he said - which I won't write now. I do not want what was essentially a private, man-to-man conversation to become "viral" or "trending". Those two minutes were a special moment of my life, a story I can tell my grandkids some day, maybe, that's about it.

But believe it not, I got a call from Shah Rukh Khan.