In 2023, Shah Rukh Khan made a smashing comeback with YRF’s Pathaan. After 5 years, fans got to see the superstar on the big screen following the Zero debacle in 2018. With his comeback film, SRK brought a thrilling mix of high-octane action, entertainment, electrifying romance, and lots of seetimaar dialogues. From ‘kursi ki peti…’ to ‘Party Pathaan ke ghar…’ every dialogue was whistleworthy and stayed with the audience.
One more dialogue that got great reaction was ‘Ek soldier yeh nahi puchta desh ne uske liye kya kiya. Puchta hai wo desh ke liye kya kar sakta hai’. I was inspired by the famous John F Kennedy quote, ‘Ask not what your country can do for you—ask what you can do for your country.’ In an interview, Pathaan’s dialogue writer, Abbas Tyrewala, revealed that he was against adding this line in the Shah Rukh Khan starrer.
Abbas told Lallantop Cinema, “I was never in favour of the Kennedy line, but it was a battle I lost. I never wanted to use such an old line in that film. I was judging that line too much. But, if people liked it, the credit should go to Siddharth Anand, Aditya Chopra, and Sridhar Raghavan. They were extremely convinced that no other line would justify this particular scene.”
In the same interview, the Pathaan dialogue writer believed that there was nothing boring about the ‘ek soldier…’ dialogue in the Shah Rukh Khan starrer. “But I lost that battle. If people are loving it today, it proves that dialogue writers are not necessarily right all the time and the importance of discussing scripts with more people involved in the film. Some things happen that they don’t belong to you but people remember you for that,” he added.
