IN 1989, Durga Rahikwar was studying at a boarding school in Nagpur. While playing “chor-police”—cops and robbers—at his hostel one day, a friend told him, “Woh Abhimanyu Rai ka character bilkul tere jaisa dikhta hai” (That Abhimanyu Rai character looks exactly like you). Abhimanyu Rai was the character Shah Rukh Khan played in his breakthrough role, in the hit television drama Fauji.
Durga was surprised, but didn’t think much about it. Soon afterwards, when he began performing poorly in exams—his parents had sent him to Nagpur in the hope that he would get a good education—he left Nagpur and went back home, to Balharshah.
In July 1992, Durga and a friend cycled 12 kilometres to a theatre in Chandrapur, to watch a new Hindi film, Deewana. It starred Rishi Kapoor and Divya Bharati, and a young actor making his Bollywood debut. Durga didn’t know his name, but knew him as the guy from Fauji. While leaving the theatre, Durga’s friend noticed a girl point to Durga and say, “Look, Shah Rukh Khan.”
Durga’s friend told him about this, and said, “She’s right. From behind, his hair looks like yours. You look like him from the side. When you stand, it looks like Shah Rukh Khan is standing.”
“Chhod na yaar” (Let it go), Durga said. “Woh hero hai. Main kahan.” (He’s a hero. Who am I?)
Deewana released in Balharshah about a month later. Word started to spread about Durga’s resemblance to Khan. His friends wanted him to learn Khan’s lines, but Durga failed to understand why. When someone insisted that he at least learn to dance like Khan, however, Durga considered the suggestion. Within a few weeks, he was dancing to “Aisi Deewangi,” from the Deewana soundtrack, at local weddings and birthday parties.
Balharshah now had a hero of its own. Strangers started approaching Durga to present him with photos of Khan. Vegetable vendors recognised Durga’s mother in the market: “Namaste, mummy. How can we take money from you? You are Shah Rukh Khan’s mother.” Whenever a new film starring Khan was released, Durga’s friends insisted on watching it with him, and paying for his ticket and snacks. Durga started dancing to Khan’s songs for small crowds at paan shops. He also performed in dance competitions—first in one at the district level, he recalled, where he came second out of 70 dancers, and then in another at state level, held in Nagpur, where he beat 267 other dancers to third place.
Meanwhile, Durga was trying to pass his class-ten exams. Every year, he’d turn up, write a few lines from Khan’s films on his answer sheets, and leave. After he flunked for the third consecutive year, he gave up. By then he was obsessed with Khan, and his ambition was focussed on building a career as a lookalike. Balharshah was too small, too remote a theatre for this dream. Only one city was big enough: Bombay.
But the journey to Bombay—from home to homelessness, from small-town fame to big-town anonymity, over a distance of 900 kilometres across the breadth of Maharashtra—was too great to make in one go. So Durga and a friend left for Nagpur first, to join a troupe of actors and dancers.
Durga’s first performance as Khan in Nagpur earned him Rs 50. After the show, audience members surrounded him backstage to ask for “autographs.” “Woh kya hota hai?” (What does that mean?) Durga whispered to his friend from back home. “Tell them you’re busy and send them to me,” the friend replied. Standing a few feet from Durga, he signed notepads, fragments of paper and anxious palms, with a confident scribble: “Junior Shah Rukh Khan.”
After eight months with the troupe, in early 1995, Durga headed to Bombay. The first few months in the big city were tough. He put up at a hostel in Colaba, sharing two rooms with about 20 other recent arrivals. Durga had to sleep on the floor in a corridor, using his trousers as a pillow. Slowly, he began getting offers to impersonate Khan in stage shows. Within six months, he was earning Rs 450 for every appearance.
After one show, a woman from the audience approached the lookalike and asked his name. “Durga,” he replied.
“Isn’t that a girl’s name?” she asked. “Why don’t you keep a simpler name?”
“Like what?” Durga said. “Shah Rukh Khan is already taken.”
Just at that moment, another audience member greeted him with, “Aur, Raju Ban Gaya Gentleman, kaisa hai?” (How are you, Raju Ban Gaya Gentleman?) Raju Ban Gaya Gentleman was a 1992 hit, starring Khan as an ambitious newcomer to Mumbai.
Durga liked the sound of “Raju.” A few months later, in November 1995, Bombay was renamed Mumbai. By then, Durga Rahikwar had become Raju Rahikwar.
Stage shows kept Raju afloat for the next few years, but now he had a higher goal: impersonating Khan in films. With the help of some contacts, he landed a five-minute role as a Khan lookalike in the B-movie Khooni No. 1.
After that, though, work dried up. For months, he struggled to find gigs. There were no other offers to do films, either. Suddenly, Raju was on the streets, sleeping on the pavement outside Churchgate station, washing autorickshaws and taxis, working as a watchman in a gift store, making chapatis for a roadside eatery.
His luck turned when, at a show, he met Naeem Sayyed, a veteran lookalike of the comedic actor Mehmood Ali, who owned an events company specialising in shows featuring Bollywood lookalikes. Sayyed took Raju in, and in return Raju helped him with errands and chores. In 1998, he invited Raju to join the company for “All India Filmstar Night,” a 22-day, 25-performer tour of South Africa.
“At that time Shah Rukh-bhai was in form,” Raju recalled. “The songs of Kuch Kuch Hota Hai had just been released, and they were received really well.” In South Africa, the “public was crazy. … Matlab itni izzat de ki admi ro de” (It showed so much respect that it could make you cry).
Raju earned Rs 315,000 for the tour. After that, he began getting regular offers from abroad, and earning “six to seven lakh” every year. He performed in around 60 shows outside India over the next five years. In 2003, he bought a one-bedroom flat near Andheri, where he still lives today. Mumbai had finally smiled upon him.
RAJU GOT MARRIED IN FEBRUARY 2005. About a year and a half later, the couple had their first child. They named her Mannat.
In February 2009, the family went to a theatre to see Billu, in which Khan had a cameo role. When the star appeared on screen, Mannat, seated in her mother’s lap, flinched with surprise and blurted out, “Papa!” Then she looked at her father, “Papa,” then back at the screen, “Papa,” and on and on.
Around the same time, Mannat began crying whenever she saw the climactic scene in Om Shanti Om, where Khan fights the film’s antagonist in a burning mansion. She was convinced that her father’s life was in danger.
Until about two years ago, Mannat used to tell her friends in school that her father was Shah Rukh Khan. To prove it, one day she brought in a picture of Raju performing in a television show. “But he’s a duplicate,” a friend of hers said. Mannat came home and asked her father, “Papa, are you a duplicate?”
Raju’s son, Aman, who is two years younger than Mannat, also confused Khan and his father in his first few years, and used to call Khan “Shah Rukh Papa.”
Slowly, Raju and his wife explained things to the children. “Woh Shah Rukh Papa bade papa hain, main unki copy karta hun” (Shah Rukh Papa is the big papa, and I copy him), Raju told them. Now, they understand.
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