Nasreen Kabir - Q&A

LONDON, England (CNN) -- Television producer and author Nasreen Kabir has an intimate knowledge of Indian cinema and has penned several books on the subject including "Bollywood, The Indian Cinema Story" (2001). In 2005 she produced the two-part documentary "The Inner and Outer World of Shah Rukh Khan" -- an intimate and expansive portrait of the man. Here she talks to CNN about the Bollywood superstar.

CNN: How would you describe Shah Rukh Khan?

Nasreen Kabir: Well, the very first time I saw him, he was late. He was about four hours late for an interview that I was supposed to do and I was obviously getting a bit irritated. But when you meet Shah Rukh you forget about everything else. He has that kind of personality and he is very engaging. I did say to Shah Rukh once: "When you're there you fully there, and when you're gone your fully gone." And that's really Shah Rukh. You know he is very, very present in the moment. He is a man of the moment and his full personality is visible to you and is shared with you in the moment.

CNN: How do you reconcile that? The fact that when you meet him he is so charming and he is so friendly and he is engaging and yet, he is so difficult to pin down. Is that the sign of diva-esque qualities or is it just that he is genuinely very busy?

Nasreen Kabir: What I think happens is that in Indian culture you find that it is very rude to say no to somebody. So the tendency is to say: "Later, I'll try, call me back", and so on. But you never say no because it is regarded as dismissive and cold, and Indian culture doesn't really encourage that kind of behavior. So you take someone like Shah Rukh, who has maybe fifty people a day or an hour who would like to meet him. Not just fans, we're talking about business, other producers, directors, writers, ad-makers and so on. So he's got to say no to a lot of people. So therefore it may appear that he is behaving like a star, or a bit of a diva and all that, but he is actually overwhelmed and I believe that he really needs forty-eight hours in twenty-four.

CNN: What do you think are his priorities in his life?

Nasreen Kabir: I think for Shah Rukh Khan, the family comes first. He may have a billion fans or two billion fans, but he really is totally dedicated to his children, his wife, his sister and the memory of his parents.

CNN: How would you describe his wife Gauri?

Nasreen Kabir: I think that she has a very strong sense of herself. Shah Rukh's wife is somebody who is very self-contained. She has a certain inner peace about her and she is not terribly interested in films or the film world. So for her it isn't a problem to stay slightly apart. Plus, she is extremely straightforward and down to earth at another level, and she realizes that when people come towards them, it is to meet Shah Rukh. She knows that she has some very close friends that she can rely on, and Shah Rukh always says -- and it is probably true -- that Gauri is very shy and maybe that is what it is. She may appear aloof to people, but I think she is quite shy. But she has a great sense of reality, that he is the star and she is happy for him to be the star."

CNN: Is religion an important part of their children's upbringing?

Nasreen Kabir: Well what happens is that, because Gauri is a Hindu and he is Muslim, he wants his children to know the best of both religions and therefore wants them to perhaps choose if they want to later in life. But he wants them to see the virtues of both and what both religions can offer. So, that is why you will find that he will celebrate Eed -- which is the Muslim celebration every year -- and he will also celebrate the Hindu New Year which is called Diwali. He also talks about celebrating Christmas too. Many people in India are used to this kind of fusion between different religions. There is the very separate reality of religion, but there is also an acknowledgement of the other religions. Religion, every religion, is so present in India, that if you've got a mother who is Hindu and a father who is Muslim, it would be hard to exclude one or the other. And he is a very secular man, Shah Rukh, and he believes in embracing all religions and allowing his children to respect both religions. But what is clear, Shah Rukh is very God-fearing and he does believe in Allah.

CNN: So you say he is secular but also God-fearing?

Nasreen Kabir: I'd say so. Secular in as much that he doesn't want to impose his religion on other people or live by every rule of the religion. But secular really, in India, means that it is all-inclusive, that you will accept the Hinduism, Muslims and Buddhists and Jains and everyone. You don't judge people on the basis of who they are in terms of religion.

CNN: What does Shah Rukh Khan mean to Bollywood?

Nasreen Kabir: I would say that for every generation, and I'd say it happens every twenty years, Hindi cinema actually focuses on one actor and that actor, which is an entirely magical formula. There isn't any set formula why that particular actor takes over, but you'll find every twenty years in Hindi films, you'll have a new star. And from the early nineties, Shah Rukh's personality on screen has been growing. The adoration has been growing. And finally, I think, he has taken the number one spot. And it really does happen over twenty years. I do believe this is a cycle and it is his time now. And it's his time under the sun, and it's his. I wouldn't say he's at his peek because I think he's still got lots of very, very big and important films to make. But I would say he is the man of today. And Indian cinema, without Shah Rukh Khan, isn't a star-studded cinema. He is the star of the cinema today.

CNN: What makes him such a big star?

Nasreen Kabir: I think that when Shah Rukh's films started becoming very popular, if you look at the kind of hero he plays, they're heroes who are fairly middle class, educated, city people. And that kind of hero reflects Indian middle classes that are now growing much larger in number. So he represented a hero who was not really terribly kind of concerned in a way socially or politically, but he was a fun-loving hero with a lot of heart. And with the big films like "Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge" or "Kuch Kuch Hota Hai", these are all the big films of the nineties that he was the hero. You'll find they're basically love stories. They're basically stories about family, and getting the girl that you love. So they're not exactly politically hard-hitting or anything, but his kind of popularity coincided with this growing middle class in India. The aspirations are about success, about achievement really and here was a hero who had already achieved a status within society and his only goal was really love.

CNN: Has not being a trained dancer hindered Shah Rukh Khan's film performances in any way?

Nasreen Kabir: I think he struggles with the dancing, but I think he has such a lot of charm and a lot of kind of charisma, but if you look at a dance sequence, I am pretty sure you are looking at his face. You are not looking at his dance steps and his feet. So as a dancer you would say that if you looked at a genuine dancer -- like another actor called Hrithik Roshan -- who is the best today in Indian cinema, you'd look at his feet, you'd look at his hands, you would look at his body. But with Shah Rukh, you're really quite transfixed by his face, and his movements and his hands and he often says he does this kind of a grand gesture which gives you the illusion of dance. But I think the whole personality is so, I don't know, appealing to the fans and the people who like him that they don't really look at the feet, so we don't know if he is a good dancer.

CNN: Why do you think his working relationship with choreographer and director Farah Khan is so strong?

Nasreen Kabir: Well what it is, is that I think, you know Farah Khan started off as a choreographer, so she choreographed many of the dance sequences that Shah Rukh would enact. And since the nineties she has been choreographing songs that Shah Rukh would actually perform on the screen. What I think appeals to Shah Rukh, is Farah is a very honest person. She is a very plain speaking person, and he likes honest people. He likes people who he can trust and also who are not very devious, or have hidden agendas. He likes straightforward people and more than anything, he likes workers. He likes people who are on their feet, who are working hard and who really have a fabulous respect for their work. And Farah Khan is definitely that. She is a real worker. She is an incredibly intuitive talent. She is a fantastic choreographer and choreographer for cinema. Perhaps not for the stage or for live performance, but she understands the camera, she understands editing, and she is very, very good for cinema. And I think that when they got together they both appreciated each others humor. She's very fast too. She will finish a song, finish a scene very, very quickly and I think Shah Rukh likes that. He likes people who are speedy because his mind, moves and works very, very fast, so if you are kind of fumbling along I think he could get impatient. And Farah is incredibly speedy and they speak a similar language and they trust each other, So I think they really are a good team.

CNN: How has the culture of Bollywood changed over the years?

Nasreen Kabir: In the old days of Hindi cinema, which is now called Bollywood, you would have a situation where it was quite dynastic. So you had the grandfather, the father and the son and they would all be big stars. There were even dynasties of women stars or actresses, the grandmother and so on and so forth. But if you look at say the past fifty years of Indian cinema it is the outsiders, the guys who have absolutely no connection to the industry that become the big stars.

In the 1950's there was Dilip Kumar. He was fabulously popular and the best, for me, one of my favorite actors and he was doing extremely well. The 1970's you had Amitabh Bachchan, who was the big, big hero of Indian films. There was no one quite like him. For 35 years he ruled and he is not connected to films at all. His family had nothing to do with films. And then you have Shah Rukh Khan, who is also an outsider, who had no connections to films, who came from theatre and television and Delhi - not even a Bombay boy. And he made it in the industry. So actually, the industry and the fans like dynasties, but they like outsiders too. Today, because you are living in a world, in an India where you are what you do, not so much what your father does matters. So in other words, in the old days they would say to you: "Hello, how are you? And what does your father do?" Then you would say: "He's a doctor," or "a lawyer," or whatever. Nowadays they say: "So what do you do?" In other words it doesn't really matter if you are from a dynasty of stars. You have to be good. And the film audiences are so discriminating and rather hard, and that is not even that you are as good as your last film. I think you're as good as your last reel. And by the beginning of the film, to the middle, to the end they have changed their opinion about you and the film and everything. And there is a big fallacy about Indian audiences, thinking that they lap up everything. It's absolutely untrue. An Indian film releases on a Friday, by Sunday night the entire country has decided whether it is a hit or a flop. So they give it forty-eight hours. If it is a hit by Sunday, all is well, and the distributors and producers are smiling. If it is not, all hell breaks loose and that is the end of it. So the audience comes out of the cinema and instantly tells you what they think. It's good, it's rubbish, we have seen this one hundred times before, the star looks to thin, too fat, too short, too tall, you know everything. But they can dismiss a film instantly. So the Indian audience is very discriminating.

CNN: What do you think the future holds for Bollywood?

Nasreen Kabir: What is happening in Indian cinema at the moment is that every film is kind of changing the goalposts and the kind of yardstick by which you judge it. So that the photography, the look is different, the set is different, the locations are different and every film is reinventing the wheel again. So it is a very, very difficult time for filmmakers in India, because things are changing so rapidly. Now in all of this, the big question is always: "Now, will our films appeal to the West?" My feeling is there hasn't been a genuine relationship between western audiences and Indian cinema. The time will come, but still there are certain things, that for the West, are rather difficult.

One is the length of the film. Most people don't like to sit through a film that is longer than two hours. Second is the subtitles, people don't like reading subtitles. And third, if you look at Hollywood, the genre of the musical is over. There are musical films occasionally, every few years maybe. I don't know what the last one was, maybe Chicago, or something that's a big hit. Otherwise they are not interested in the musical anymore in the same way, so you have to persuade them that the story is interesting, that the songs are good. So there are lots of things and lots of hurdles to get over. What I think will make the big, big difference is the fact that Asian people are living and working, becoming an absolute force to reckon with, a great influence, wherever they are in the western world. And they will slowly, by their own enthusiasm, maybe get their friends and their friends' friends to fall in love with Indian cinema. It's very infectious when you actually see it. It's great fun, but it follows different conventions, and I do believe that unless the audience has a relationship with that cinema, they cannot genuinely start loving the film stars or be interested in the subject. They have to somehow find their way to the cinema, buy their ticket and sit down in the dark and form a relationship with that cinema. I don't think that has happened yet.

CNN: So in that respect what do you think Om Shanti Om's chances are of doing well in the UK?

Nasreen Kabir: I would say, Om Shanti Om could do well, because it is a lot of fun. But the film is really built on a lot of cross-referencing. It refers to a whole period of the Indian cinema in the seventies. There are lots of in-jokes, about stars and movies and songs and so on. So if you don't get all those in jokes, I am not sure whether you would find it completely funny. So it's not really a spoof, but it is a parody in a way, a very affectionate parody on Indian cinema. So, if you don't understand those references, I am not sure if it will work so effectively. I think in terms of entertainment, it's fine. It is maybe a little difficult because of these in-jokes.