A12
Many waited for over three hours for the event, braving
heavy showers without umbrellas. Inset, Isha Ambani,
Yale student and daughter of Indian billionaire Mukesh
Ambani, introduced Shah Rukh Khan to the
audience
The Shah Rukh Khan
guide to happiness
In a speech filled with laughter, encouragement, friendly warnings on the pitfalls of idealism in a hurry, Shah Rukh Khanstirredthe motions of Yale students and hundreds of students and older
fans from across New York, New Jersey and
Massachusetts with his poignant recollections of his parents and the fondness for his
two children.
“Your age is the age when we most con-
fuse happiness with gratification,” the 46-
year-old Bollywood superstar and producer
said. “So, I will say quite plainly: If you are
smart, if you want to survive life’s relentless
onslaught of challenges, you will sooner or
later understand that the things that made
you happy 10 years ago will end up being
the ones that make you happy when you hit
the geriatric superhero stage. Kids, start
collecting your action figures, now!”
He said he has “everything I could have
aspired for at your age. I have success, I
have fame, I have wealth and I have three
Playstations. One for the house, one for
shootings and one just because I can have
it. But none of these have any consequence
to my happiness,’ he asserted looking into
hundreds of eyes, ‘the only thing that does
is the love of my children. You don’t have
children — I hope — but you have parents,
you have people you love. And nothing in
this world of everythings means more than
that. Happiness, in other words, lies in the
things you will never be able to count.”
It’s all about loving your parents, the Bollywood megastar tells Yale.
Arthur J Pais listens in
‘The other day my son
and I stumbled upon the
Kamasutra on the net
and I can tell you that
experience was not very
happy. He’s 14 and he
knew more about it than
I did.’
To him, he said, it is no more than cuddling up to his kids and watching iCarly or
the Family Guy. He said he had no intention of trying to be an intellectual just
because he was addressing a gathering at
an Ivy League school.
“Well most of the time, anyway. The other
day my son and I stumbled upon the
Kamasutra on the net and I can tell you
that experience was not very happy. He’s 14
and he knew more about it than I did.”
He also said he wanted the audience “to
understand this business of happiness well.
Because I know at one level, all parents are
the actually the same. Some look sterner,
some are less fun, some are embarrassingly
weird, but for each parent the bottom and
the top line of their lives is this — you kids
are their greatest source of happiness.
Parents want nothing in return. Just that
you respect that feeling. That’s all.”
Khan, who was in confessional mode for
much of the talk, added, “Take my own chil-
dren. I believe that girls really are from
planet Venus. My girl comes from a place of
gentleness, caring, love, intelligence and all
things beautiful. My boy comes from “I am
too good to be your kid” planet. Guys are
obnoxious! I am not being sexist, but that’s
the truth!”
He was in London recently, shooting for a
Yash Chopra film, and missing his kids.
“Y!” To my emotional fatherly
outpourings! That (the Y) and an emoticon.
I wanted to fly to Mumbai and hang him
upside down till he looked liked a silly red-faced emoticon himself. But I didn’t. I just
smiled.’”
Watch Shah Rukh Khan's Yale speech
http://ishare.rediff.com/video/entertainment/srk-wows-
yale-university-crowd-/6626806
