He was two hours late for a recent Pepsi event that co-headlined John Abraham, and earlier this week, he beat that record by a few minutes when turning out for the inauguration of the Sunfeast Open tennis tournament.

So if you see film journalists walking around with copies of Tolstoy, Dostoevsky and suchlike, don't be too surprised -- we need reading matter, the bigger the better, to keep ourselves occupied.

Granting stars have busy schedules, the operative word should be 'schedule', na? That is to say, if you commit -- and since this is a sponsored do, you are getting paid to make that commitment -- to being at a particular place at a particular time, surely that goes on your calendar, and it is therefore not possible that you are simultaneously scheduled to be somewhere else?

What really irks is when such late-coming seems totally unnecessary. The Sunfeast do, for instance, was at the Taj Land's End, in Bandra; the hotel is at best 200 meters away from SRK's home, Mannat. So how hard could it be to cover that distance?

Presspersons with nothing to do but look at their watches -- none of them Tag Hauer -- began grumbling, and at one point even threatened to walk out. But then, one photographer dug his heels in, and reminded the rest of us that Shah Rukh is 'The King' -- and you can't boycott kings, even in a democracy.

The thing is, Shah Rukh understands us more than we understand ourselves. He once said the media needs him more than he needs the media, and we have been proving him correct ever since.

Text: Gullu Gupshup

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