Shah Rukh’s ‘Online’ birthday smashes records!
INDIATIMES MOVIES


For those in doubt of superstar Shah Rukh Khan’s huge (and still growing) popularity the world over, here’s more proof of the pudding. The gifted actor celebrated his birthday in a quiet way with family, and some friends dropping in to wish the actor. Of course, there were the usual thousands outside his ‘landmark’ bungalow ‘Mannat’, for a dekko of their favourite. But the real hungama was in the virtual world and in the mobile space created specially for the ‘world’s biggest star’. It was a virtual birthday party for King Khan thrown by the world’s most popular Indian movie website, Indiatimes Movies (www.movies.indiatimes.com) where fans were invited to wish SRK online and could even send flowers to him via the Indiatimes Shopping gateway. Simultaneously, mobile users could send their greetings to him on Indiatimes’ mobile service 8888. You can not even begin to guess what the response was. There was a virtual cyber-stampede to wish the star, cutting through barriers of age, sex, race, religion, caste, creed, nationality and language. From all over the world, the online response was soon flooding the servers with over a hundred pages of online responses (meaning tens of thousands of e-messages). And many thousands of SMS’ on the 8888 mobile service. And the surprising part is that inspite of the anonymity the internet has to offer, there was not one single negative message for the actor, re-enforcing his immense popularity several times over. And even though the birthday is well and truly over, even as we go to press, the messages keep pouring in. Whew! Just goes to prove what star power really is ...in the true sense of the word. Though SRK, in his usual modest manner could only say, “What can I say? I thank my fans and those dear to me for their good wishes. That love and affection is what keeps me going. God bless us all!” Indeed. And God bless the person whose message SRK likes the most. He or she will be the lucky one to sip chai with the star. Well, can you get any luckier?