When Shah Rukh Khan recalled having acupuncture needles stuck in his private parts: ‘It was the most humiliating and painful experience of my life’

Actor Shah Rukh Khan is known for his wit and charm, and both those traits were on display in a column that he used to write around a decade ago. In the first edition of that column, which was published on DNA, he wrote about his scientific bent of mind, and how he was once forced to consider superstition when he was told to undergo a surgery for a prolapsed disc. But his decision to try an alternative remedy backfired on him, when a doctor proposed a rather humiliating procedure.
“Everybody began to foretell doom. They led all that could go wrong. They said I could be paralysed or rendered voiceless,” Shah Rukh wrote in the column, for DNA. But the doctors told him that he should get the surgery done immediately.

Concerned about potential side-effects, Shah Rukh decided to wait a year and try alternative methods. He made it clear that he wasn’t trying to undermine people’s beliefs narrating this story, and added, “To me it was just intriguing that there was such a wonderful variety of cures and treatments on offer for a serious injury like mine.” He proceeded to recount his ‘escapades and misadventures up to the final day of surgery’.
Shah Rukh described the man that he went to for ‘pin therapy’ as one of the finest specials in the world for that kind of thing. But he was in for a rude shock. “The thought of him sticking needles in my neck was scary. But I need not have worried. He didn’t want to put needles in my neck, instead he wanted to stick them in my private parts to fix my neck! As you can imagine it was an extremely hurtful prospect. I was shaken to the core of my being (not to mention, below it).”

Shah Rukh wrote that the special was from ‘the Far East’, and that he couldn’t really understand what he was saying. “He kept repeating, ‘Take off your clothes, take off your clothes’. So, I took off my shirt, but it didn’t seem to suffice. He continued his chant regardless: ‘take off your clothes.’” Shah Rukh then found himself lying naked on a table, with the special looming over him with ‘big, big pins’. He added, “The rest is too graphic to describe. It was the most humiliating and painful experience of my life.”
Shah Rukh concluded saying that ‘the only thing that had changed was that now the pain was between (his) legs and not in (his) neck’.
Shah Rukh turns 57 on Wednesday. The actor hasn’t been seen in a starring role since 2018’s Zero, but has appeared in three cameos this year, in the films Rocketry: The Nambi Effect, Laal Singh Chaddha, and Brahmastra. He will return in full force with three films next year: Pathaan, Jawan, and Dunki.