It was, as he said, his "fan moment". Bollywood superstar Shah Rukh Khan, who was feted with a Crystal Award at the World Economic Forum summit here along with Hollywood celebrities Cate Blanchett and Elton John, requested a selfie.
Shah Rukh received the award on Monday for his "leadership in championing children's and women's rights in India" with the help of Meer Foundation.
After receiving the award, SRK lauded Blanchett and John for winning a billion hearts.
Honoured to receive the @wef’s 24th Crystal Award, together with @eltonofficial and Cate Blanchett. My fan moment!!
— Shah Rukh Khan (@iamsrk) January 22, 2018
Watch the #crystalawards via https://t.co/rILPgHRgtL at the #wef18 meeting in Davos.
"I am genuinely and deeply grateful for this honour and it is indeed a privilege to be in the company of two phenomenal and extraordinary human beings and talent -- Cate Blanchette and Sir Elton John.
"She is of course the lady who commands the wind and you sir command the song of a billion hearts, including mine," Shah Rukh said in his speech.
The 52-year-old requested Blanchett and John for a selfie.
"So, I am really really touched that I have been chosen between these two. Just a special request before you go... Can I do a selfie," he said.
After that, he joked that it may leave his children embarrassed.
Shah Rukh also spoke about his social initiative via Meer Foundation, an organisation that works extensively towards empowering women subjected to acid attack.
"To disfigure a woman by throwing acid on her face is to me one of the crudest acts of subjugation imaginable. At the source of it lies the view that a woman does not have any right to assert her choice or say 'no' to advances by a man or a group of men."
He said he was grateful to the brave women and children who he has worked with.
Shah Rukh also thanked his sister Shehnaz Lalarukh Khan, wife Gauri and daughter Suhana.
"I want to thank my sister, wife and my little daughter for bringing me up well and teaching me the value of requesting, sometimes imploring and sometimes even begging a yes from a women instead of forcing on her," he said before wrapping up his speech with a "Namaskar" and "Jai Hind".
Before the award gala, the "Raees" star shared a photograph of himself with his signature open arm style.
In another post made after reaching Davos was a photograph featuring him with a pristine white snow-clad landscape as the backdrop.
Here is SRK’s full speech from Davos…
I am genuinely and deeply grateful for this honour and it is a privilege to be in the company of two phenomenal and extraordinary human beings and talent, Cate Blanchett and Sir Elton John
She is of course a lady who commands the wind and you sir command the song of a billion hearts, including mine. I am really touched that I am chosen between these two. Just a special request, before you go, can I do a selfie? Now, there I have embarrassed my children.
Actors are renowned narcissists. No matter how much we pretend not to believe in external beauty, we tend to be obsessed by it one way or the other. And perhaps being surrounded by this obsession of beauty, a few years ago I came across a lady who had been brutalised by an acid attack. It kind of changed my life or my perspective of it, at least.
To disfigure a woman by throwing acid on her face, to me, is one of the basest, crudest acts of subjugation imaginable. At the source of it lies the view that a woman does not have the right to assert her choice, say no to the advances of a man or a group of people.
And yet, each of the women I met, I found within them the courage to move on with their lives and reject the idea of victimhood. What struck me most about them was this -- what was done to them only made them braver, stronger and able to free themselves, to make the choices everyone around them was telling them they could not make or should not make.
From them I have learnt how courage can catalyse victimhood into heroism, how solidarity -- rather than charity – enables the human will to overcome, how equality is not a concept but a truth that encompasses all living beings, how service of others is not a choice anymore for any of us but it is a duty that all of us must fulfill in the name of humankind.
When I journeyed through the life of these heroic women and children through the work of Meer Foundation, I experienced a complete reversal of perspective. I stumbled upon the truth that there are no benefactors and beneficiaries between living beings anymore.
There is just a vast pool of resources – natural, spiritual, economic and technological – that everyone is equally entitled but some have gained by more access to it.
Either by accident, as in my case, or by talent, design and hard work as in the case of all of you present here. Standing here before all of you who constitute perhaps the most powerful group of human beings in the world, I dare say power is one of these perspectives we like to maintain a certain way but power actually needs a complete reversal more than any other thing in the world today.
I was babysitting my five-year-old son before I came here today and suddenly he screamed, “Papa, papa my eye went into my hair. Can you get my eye out of my hair?” He didn’t say get my hair out of my eye, like we all believe we do. And it is a bit like that when you have power, you think things get in its way but it is actually power that is getting in the way.
It gets in the way of universal access to resources because it seeks to control and enclose them so we, the powerful, need to get out of the way, I think. To pick the barriers apart – the ones that give us names and colours and races and hierarchies.
We need to get out of the way and into the work of breaking open access for each and every one with a true sense of ourselves but not as more powerful or less privileged, but genuinely as equals. That is what I have learned from my beautifully scarred women. I am thankful to these brave women and children who I work with for all they have done for me, to World Economic Forum and all of you present here for recognising the heroism by conferring this award upon me.
I want to thank my sister, my wife and my little daughter for bringing me up well and teaching me the value of requesting, sometimes imploring and begging a yes from a woman, instead of forcing it upon her.
