Saif Ali Khan and his surprising vibrant humour

Saif Ali Khan’s sense of humour is unexpected. You know about the royal lineage, real (as the newly-anointed 10th Nawab of Pataudi) and metaphoric (the cricket pedigree, being the late Tiger Pataudi’s son, and the tinseltown pedigree, being Sharmila Tagore’s son).

You know his B-Town repertoire, including some really interesting roles, like his Indian Iago in the breakout Omkara. You couldn’t have missed his bad boy machismo, not after Brawlgate’s front page attention grabbers (he tells us, he’s always been somewhat scrappy, trouble seems to just follow him). But the humour is a delightful surprise: “I’m told marketing is part of the job. Then we come across really strange things like some star went to somebody’s house at 4 in the morning. And I’m like, if that’s the standard how much can you really do?!! So there isn’t a public face to me. I talk in the same way to my friends from school. That’s why I can’t do it the whole day. Like, Agent Vinod, (his upcoming spy thriller) — how much we’ve spoken about it the whole week, TV channels, interviews. …And now, at lunch, I’m telling family members about it. I start talking ‘Oh, it was an original film of 1977…’ and they’re like, ‘…What are you talking about?!!!”

It is this side to Saif — easy speaking, devil-may-care (consequences, we’ll take care of ‘em later), honest — that endears him to onlookers. There is no obvious charm offensive, but he’s holding the room as if born to it. A movie star, yes, but we get the sense of speaking to a man for many (if not all) seasons — Movies is something he does, and wants to do well, but they’re not all he is. Here’s a man who needs a comfort level before he speaks, a man who talks knowingly about guns and dogs and the decorum in a way of life gone by, who’s interests are books and music and who wants to, one day, with the help of a London publisher, build a library shrine to heritage photos in his to-the-manor-born legacy, Pataudi. It is difficult not to be taken by such a person, bad boy record notwithstanding. Clearly, his audience is obliging. 

When Bebo’s ‘personal Khan’ shows his droll side, he has the house going: he’s talking books, authors he’s liked. We speak Umberto Eco, Rushdie, and Saif’s asked by the team: ‘Have you met him?’ He responds, ‘I have. He was writing the screenplay for Midnight’s Children. So Kareena (girlfriend Bebo Kapoor) was sitting in the corner and I am a big fan so I was getting my books signed first. Then Deepa Mehta I think, narrated the story, and it turned out (obviously!) that the hero is some 18-year-old boy. And Rushdie said, ‘No, but the father’s role...?’ And from the corner she’s shouting “Father’s role??!!” (Here, Saif acts out Kareena’s gestures of outraged incredulity and the room dissolves in splits) And I was like, ‘You can’t just say ‘No’ like that’. …But I just quickly got my books signed!”