The burning question on King Khan's lips

Most of our politicians, barring a microscopic few, (yes, the stress is surely on the word microscopic) are chronic sufferers of the popular foot-in-mouth disease, found prevalent among the elected elite, all over the world.
So much so that even if, by accident or by sheer chance, logic flows from the motor mouths, the aam janta is so surprisingly taken aback, disoriented and confused whether to take it on face value or as usual get on with our daily work.

The Honorable Minister for Health is no stranger to this category, and his antics make sure he displays the symptoms at regular intervals, which essentially keeps everybody happy and entertained, and what's more - than to add a little bit of zing into our dreary dull every day lives.

The controversy about gory pictures to be printed on cigarette packets to keep away the beginners is still going around strong, and if that wasn't enough, the Knight of Good Health for India has pointed his lance at the wrong windmill this time around.

He dared to point it at King Khan.

And King Khan told him to go take a hike

The Minister had categorically requested Shah Rukh Khan and Amitabh Bachchan to restrain from Smoking,
in Reel Life because according to him, "52 per cent of children have their first puff of a cigarette because of movie celebrities."

And the King took this tantamount to muzzling him, and his creative freedom, on screen!
Mr.Minister, you just don't pick a fight with a man whose yearly earnings is over Rs.100 Crore, and who has already paid an advance tax amount of Rs.27 Crore for his earnings till December 2007.

Maybe you have your own valid reasons for going all cylinders firing with this Public request at the reigning King of Bollywood, but, lets face it, you just cant go around doling advice to someone who makes an equivalent amount of money per year, equivalent to the Commonwealth Youth Games Budget, proposed by the Government of Maharashtra.

You see, it just ain't good sense.

Shah Rukh Khan has gone on record saying that the Minister has absolutely no right to dictate terms to him and goes on with Bollywood guns blazing - "You cannot tell me how to earn a packet, you cannot tell me what to eat and what to wear, what not to say to my wife, these are personal things. So, I guard that very jealously".
Point taken, Mr Shah Rukh Khan.

Maybe you keep emphazising the fact that the smoking that you do on screen is just make believe and it has nothing to do with the actual act of smoking a cigarette, which you do in real life, rather consistently.
Maybe you just don't need someone dictating how to lead your life.
For that matter, none of us do.

And for the very fact that Mr.Ramadoss is urging the Superstars to quit smoking, maybe he should be thinking this too.
If the Hon.Minister means that the young mind at an impressionable age finds no problem to emulate his superstar onscreen smoking, well, wouldn't that also be for the fact that the young man, didn't have the power of an educated mind to help him differentiate between the two?

Wouldn't that directly imply that you, dear Minister, along with your elected community, that have been ruling this Nation for the past 60 years still haven't been capable of giving the right to good education to every single impressionable mind that you just mentioned?
And that would be having a whole lot of egg on your face, ain't it, regardless of the poultry fiasco right over the corner, Sir?

And for all the 'creative freedom' that you have been hankering about, O King, does it take a sizeable chunk of income off your 2008 revenues to stop showing a smoking scene on screen? You just cant deny the influence you have on the young generation.

If in doubt, all you need is to pull out your endorsement contracts index and glance through it.
About 95 percent of the products that smile back at you are for the X generation. They wouldn't make you brand ambassador of Pepsi for nothing.
And the times when you are not playing King Khan, you are a loving father too.
And there are two impressionable minds right around you, for all their living lives.

It was wrong for the Hon Minister to dictate terms, but nothing would be more right than your small gesture that would never allow you be seen smoking on screen.
Kings are seen as magnanimous souls.