Chinmayi Sripada prays for SRK, family

National Award-winning singer Chinmayi Sripada on Thursday shared a heartfelt and personal anecdote about Bollywood superstar Shah Rukh Khan and sent her prayers to his family as they face tough times amid the arrest of his son, Aryan, in a cruise drugs party case.

Sripada sang the memorable melody "Titli" for "Chennai Express", the 2013 action comedy starring Shah Rukh Khan and Deepika Padukone, and directed by Rohit Shetty. In a lengthy thread on Twitter, the singer recalled how Shah Rukh Khan said she "sounded like love" when he heard the song "Titli" all those years ago. "If I remember right, it was the first time an actor, anywhere had said anything nice about my singing. I remember laughing and crying at the same time," she wrote. Sripada said her mother noticed and put out a long tweet about all that she observed and said "a general thank you" to the star on social media as she was "not the type to get excited in general for anything at all". At the audio launch of "Chennai Express", the singer said Shah Rukh Khan reached out to her after reading her mother's long essay, which he remembered "word by word".

"(He) asked me to convey his respects to my mother. Cut to a few hours later, I was saying bye, taking leave of everyone, and he said he'll speak to my mother. I thought he was joking and he wasn't. He took my phone, spoke to my mother for some 15 minutes (sic)," Sripada, 37, shared. She further said that the star made her mother feel like "the most special being in the entire world".

Shah Rukh Khan also met her mother when he came to Chennai several days later. "He took the effort to cut across a huge room with people waiting, found my mother and took her blessing by touching her feet. I will never forget how this man made me feel. How he made my mother feel. "He was such a breath of fresh air and I knew a Superstar like him could be this sincerely, genuinely nice. He did NOT have to be that nice. But he did," she wrote. The brief meeting with Shah Rukh Khan is "etched in our memory", said Sripada.

The singer also expressed her solidarity with the actor's family, writing, "Whatever's going on, is beyond my comprehension but I do pray that the difficult times that his family is going through, passes." Her tweet comes after Shah Rukh Khan on Thursday morning met Aryan Khan for the first time at Mumbai's Arthur Road Jail, where the 23-year-old is currently lodged after he was arrested with a few others on October 3 after the Narcotics Central Bureau raided a cruise ship off the Mumbai coast and claimed to have seized drugs, including charas. A team of the NCB's Mumbai zonal unit also visited Shah Rukh Khan's residence 'Mannat' in suburban Bandra in the afternoon seeking from him certain material related to the investigation into the case, an official said. Aryan Khan subsequently moved the Bombay High Court to challenge the lower court's order. The HC on Thursday said it would hear his bail plea on October 26.