I planned to spend Valentine’s Day with The Romantics, the new docuseries on Netflix directed by Smriti Mundhra. I went in with a sceptical mind — mentally ready to shrug metaphorical shoulders if it failed to delight. Over four hours and an idiotic grin later, I promised myself to watch it again the following night. For it was four hours of magic, nostalgia, heartache and Aditya Chopra. But my come-fall-in-love-again moments were very predictably centred on the one and only Shah Rukh Khan.

Ever since he plunged into my life at the end of a parachute in the Doordarshan serial Fauji, I, along with millions of others, loved him openly, unapologetically and proudly – for there is nothing havey-cavey about the love we feel for this man. Whether he opens his arms wide to embrace us all, charms the mothers, or dunks his wife in a tub full of Holi colour – he is our man. And over the years, the incredibly smart, witty, wise, funny, self-deprecating man of Ted Talks, university speeches, press conferences, Eden Gardens was the one we lauded. In The Romantics, it was this Shah Rukh he brought before the camera – very, very real.

He had me at “Where do I sit?” And then through the smart cuts and juxtapositions of storytelling emerged this human tale of an outsider finding a surrogate father in Yash Chopra, of a deeply creative collaboration with the veteran filmmaker-producer’s elusive elder son Adi (Aditya Chopra) and being “each other’s filter” during the filming of Darr. And how can one not love him when he talks about watching Sunday Doordarshan films on a neighbour’s durrie, when he talks about insisting on having a fight scene with the indulgent blessing of Yash Chopra at the end of Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge, a film he never wanted to do? It was Adi who persuaded Shah Rukh with “a superstar in India will be every mother’s son, every sister’s brother, every college girl’s fantasy” and recognised that “your eyes have something that cannot just be wasted on action”.

I think I was specially moved by the arrested look on Shah Rukh Khan’s face when he interviewed Yash Chopra post the shooting of Jab Tak Hai Jaan. His response to this being Yashji’s “last one” was a mixture of fear, knowledge and tenderness — something that brought tears to my eyes. I had no emotional connect with Yash Chopra but I channelled Shah Rukh’s empathy and it broke my heart to see the devastation on his face when he was headed out to pay his last respects to his father in the film industry.

And such is the power of The Romantics that they helped to create this forever love for Shah Rukh Khan. Now with Pathaan and a glimpse into his journey with Yash Raj Films, my cup overfloweth. As Shah Rukh tells Salman Khan in the last magical scene of his current blockbuster Pathaan, “Hume hee karna padega, bachcho pe nahin chhod sakte.”