Why Is Shah Rukh Khan Dancing at a Billionaire's Wedding?
The billionaire Bollywood star now represents nothing more than tacky deference to power and money.
Why, you might be asking, has a video of Indian Bollywood star Shah Rukh Khan dancing at the wedding of a billionaire’s child gone viral? Which billionaire’s wedding, is probably your follow-up question. Is this the same multi-mega-loaded person’s wedding that a Trump son danced at? Who can tell? It’s hard to keep up with the vulgar festivities of India’s ultra-rich.
In one clip, a bride in all her sparkling finery asks Khan to repeat the lines from one of his well-known advertisements. Khan declined the insistent bride in his typically self-effacing way; when you do a ghutka (chewing tobacco) ad, they never let you forget it, he demurred. In another viral video, he appears to invite a bride to dance, and she appears to shyly refuse (the groom, however, does try to match his steps). Is it the same bride? I honestly can’t tell. Either way, Khan performing at a billionaire’s wedding is nothing new. Remember him coaxing that rhythmless dud of a dancer, Hillary Clinton, to shake a leg at the wedding of one of the Ambani children (India’s richest family)? Who can forget?
The actor, who recently became a billionaire himself, commands massive fees for his appearances. One Indian website estimated that eight crore rupees – nearly $900,000 – is Khan’s standard payment for dancing with a giggling bride and her luxury guests. Khan has said at different moments that he takes these gigs to bring happiness to people (which people, he did not specify) and to fund his films, which are hardly short of funding. But Khan’s latest viral moments raise a larger, more depressing question. As the world burns and images of human suffering from Gaza to Sudan are broadcast in an endless loop of carnage, what sort of politics does Khan – uniquely positioned to speak to hundreds of millions of people – represent?