SRK is bigger than Pitt, Madonna: Gotham Chopra

Shah Rukh "is the sun among stars in the bright Bollywood Galaxy," says spiritual guru Deepak Chopra's son Gotham Chopra, "Yeah, the same guy Newark New Jersey Customs officials detained yesterday for several hours on account of Shah Rukh having the same last name as some dude on a terror watchlist somewhere."

Gotham Chopra blogged about the time his non-Indian wife and he met the My Name is Khan star. As people who are used to bumping into stars, they considered themselves quite immune to being star-struck. But there was this one time that they weren't so immune. "Not Brad Pitt, not George Clooney, not Tom Cruise, Denzel, Bruce Wayne, Gladiator, or any of the other usual suspects. No we're talking the BIGGEST movie star in the world ladies and gents, Bollywood sensation SHAH RUKH KHAN."

Gotham narrates, "My wife Candice who is not Indian has watched countless Shah Rukh Bollywood movies with my two nieces. ...Anyway, so Candice and I are in Mumbai to attend a good friend's wedding. Shah Rukh - who I had met casually a few times before - was in attendance at the party, drawing a huge crowd of admirers as expected. Still, at one point, Candice, myself, and Shah Rukh find ourselves face to face. I shook his hand and reminded him that we had met before once or twice.
"'Of course,' he nodded and smiled, 'it's nice to see you again.' He turned to Candice. 'But madam,' he bowed to her and took her hand, 'it's a true privilage to meet you.' He bent down on his knee and kissed her palm.

"Like I said, her knees buckeled and her cheeks flushed red. She giggled like a school girl and sheepishly looked away. The moment passed as another admirer pulled Shah Rukh's attention away. Candice would gush over it for weeks....

Back to the New Jersey incident, Gotham writes, "This is no joke people. Shah Rukh Khan is the biggest movie star in India, a country of 1.3 billion people, thereby making him the biggest movie star in the world. I'm struggling to find a comparable here in the US. No offense to Will Smith or Matt Damon or Pitt, Cruise, Clooney, Angelina or whomever else you can think of, but they all pale in comparison. Maybe Michael Jackson, God rest his soul, or Madonna are vaguely comparable. Maybe."

"But here's the thing. It's not just American customs agents being provincial, it's the fact that I would guess that in India alone, there are several million Khans. I'm not joking. Khan is one of the most common Muslim names and India is not even an Islamic country. "Ghengis Khan," anyone? Khan is like Jones or Smith. This is how our security works in the US? This is how we are catching terrorists? Are you kidding me?"

The detention was shameful, he states, "A few weeks ago, a big to-do was made about African American Hardvard Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. getting arrested outside of his own house in Suburban, Massachusetts. Now this. Racial profiling in America, either subtley as it appears to have happened with Gates in Mass (my hometown) or by the book as it appears to have happened in NJ is shameful. It's based on ignorance and it actually perpetuates the same sort of hostility it aims to undo."

He adds, "I'm not going to get all crazy about this and blow it out of proportion, though I do think it's a big deal and could see it blowing up if Indians in India get galvanized. The point is that despite all of our social networking and our flattening of the world and our East-West fusion culture and the fact that people in Milwaukee do yoga , we're still pretty provincial here in the good ol' US of A and there is an implict danger to it."

Gotham concludes, "Trust me on this one, Shah Rukh Khan is no terrorist. That's not my wife's type."