He is one of India’s biggest superstars but Bollywood actor Shahrukh Khan says it is lonely at the top and he is constantly fighting with the “feeling of emptiness”. “There is something wrong in me. I sense it. I feel it, but I don’t know what it is,” Shahrukh said during the ThinkFest conclave, an annual event, in Goa.

“I have a beautiful family. I have a few friends with whom I spend lot of time. I don’t want to die like my father. I don’t want to be unknown. I would like to be just successful. Believe me it is lonely at the top.”

Shahrukh, who turned 47 recently, is in the process of giving final touches to his autobiography. “Somehow there is this feeling of emptiness. I have this restlessness, strangeness, which I fill up with my acting.”

The actor, who lost his father at the age of 15, recalled how his family was always short of money in his childhood. “Once, my father took me to show a cinema in Delhi. He did not have enough money. We sat near Kamani auditorium and he told me that it is wonderful to see the vehicles passing.

“When I want to take my son out for a movie I should be able to show him the movie and not the cars,” Shahrukh said. He has been ruling the film industry since his successful debut with 1992 film ‘Deewana’ but Shahrukh says he always had a fear of failure that his father went through.

“I think my father was most successful failure in the world and I am proud of him,” the actor said, adding that his father was a “handsome pathan”. Shahrukh also got nostalgic about the moment when his father died and his body was brought home.

“My sister just collapsed and for the next two years she did not recover from the shock. She didn’t cry but she could not face the reality of our father’s death,” he said. “A lot of things which are Bollywood-like or flamboyant in me are actually to cover up my emotions. I don’t have guts to be so simple. To avoid depression I act.”

Shahrukh said that 90 per cent of the things which he depicts in the films are experiences of his life.
Meanwhile, Shahrukh ruled out that he was going through a midlife crisis and termed some instances of his arrogance as being a typical “Delhi boy.” “I am a Delhi boy...,” he said, during an interview at ThinkFest conclave that concluded in Goa yesterday.

Shahrukh, who allegedly slapped director Shirish Kunder during a party and was involved in a brawl with the policemen at Wankhede Stadium in Mumbai during an IPL match, said, “I am not going through midlife crisis. I am going through Delhi phases.”

The actor also remembered how during his initial days in Mumbai when he was shooting for ‘Kabhi Haan Kabhi Na’, he landed in trouble for threatening a journalist over an article that linked him to an actress.

“I went to the house of that journalist and threatened him,” Shahrukh said, adding that “next day this act of mine landed me in jail. I was allowed to make only one phone call from the police station. Instead of making a call to my wife or my lawyer, I called the same journalist and threatened him again.” He termed his act as “foolishness.” Shahrukh also said that till some time back, his daughter used to think that he was Aamir Khan.

“Four years back, my daughter used to think that I am Aamir Khan and for my son I am always a hero,” the superstar said. On the occasion, Shahrukh read out some excerpts from his autobiography, to which he is giving final touches. It sketches his life from childhood to stardom.