My initial role in Fauji required me to only count crows: Shah Rukh Khan

Mumbai: Shah Rukh Khan has seen stardom like none other, and his rags-to-riches story is the kind of stuff made of adamantine legend.

SRK, who celebrated 25 years of his reign as the supremo of Indian cinema, was emotional while crediting the people who helped him when was a struggler, and new in the city.

However, the actor also shared an interesting hitherto unknown anecdote on how he got to bag the lead role in the cult television series, 'Fauji'.

Shah Rukh, who played Lieutenant Abhimanyu Rai in the show, incidentally was not the first choice for the role of the lead. The role was originally to be played by producer-writer-director Colonel RK Kapoor's son.

Divulging further, Shah Rukh said, “I landed up on the sets of ‘Fauji’, because the house-owner that we were speaking to after we needed a smaller house post the demise of my father, got to know that I’d been in Mumbai to act, and he revealed that his own father-in-law was producing a TV serial.

"When I went there, Colonel Kapoor (Producer-director) offered me this sweet role, where I make a mistake and the Major would ask me to go a tree and count the number of crows in it. Once I reveal there are four, he asks me to be ‘Saavdhaan’. I was embarrassed to go back and tell my mother that my role was all about counting crows.”

Well that could have spelt some serious career stagnation for the actor, but turns out lucked out well on time.

“A lot of what I am today is courtesy luck. The colonel’s son, who was the cinematographer, was also to play the lead. But he realised he can’t do both simultaneously and decided to stick to cinematography. The colonel couldn’t find a replacement in time, so he said, ‘Hey, you. You are the one. You are good, jolly good. Come on. Go there.’. And I became Abhimanyu Rai, overnight. And he was the nicest to me. All of them treated me like family,” he concluded.

Well, the show did mark the arrival of the star of the millennium, and aren't we glad!