A great performance never announces itself through the obvious. It shakes the imagination instead. It withholds, resists easy meaning, and moves against convention. It leaves threads untied so that you are drawn to look closer, to sense what cannot be stated. It is as tender as it is troubling, as haunting as it is human. Such a performance resembles a puzzle that resists solution. Say, like a Rubik’s Cube, it draws both performer and spectator into the same struggle for understanding. Or a hall of mirrors, where each reflection reveals something the other did not intend to show, and both are changed by what they see. Shah Rukh Khan has attempted such performances more than once . Each time, he reminds us what an actor he becomes when freed to explore. Each time, he reminds us what a

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