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On being nudged to divulge details, the actor seems to give in with a laugh but remains vague. “The film is saying something that’s very fundamental. And once again the vehicle Raju has chosen is humour — just the way he did with Munnabhai M.B.B.S. and Lage Raho Munnabhai,” he says.

Khan is more forthcoming about the process of playing PK’s character: he wears green lenses, doesn’t blink, doesn’t move his hands, speaks Bhojpuri and chews paan constantly in the film. “During a test shoot at Mumbai’s Mehboob Studio, Vidhu Vinod Chopra landed up on the sets. He is the one who suggested that we should enact the scene without blinking. It worked. It also gave me a big cue on how to approach the character,” recalls the actor whose elfin ears have been made to stand out even more in the film that releases on December 19.

Self-admittedly an untrained actor, it is important for Khan to get into the mind of the character he essays. After shooting one film at a time for many years, the actor shot Dhoom 3 and PK simultaneously. “When Dhoom 3 was nearly 60 per cent complete, its director Vijay Krishna Acharya wanted to take a break. Since PK’s schedule was already delayed, I ended up shooting for it during the period. After 40 days of shooting PK, when I went back to shooting Dhoom 3 in Switzerland, I ended up delivering my lines in Bhojpuri the first couple of times,” he says.

Often credited for picking up the right script, Khan follows a single criterion for it: “I decide it on the basis of how I react to it. I certainly like to play a role that’s challenging. Otherwise, there are no other boxes I want to tick.” He has been privy to script narrations since childhood. “When someone came to narrate a script to my father (director Tahir Hussain) and uncle (director Nasir Hussain), I would sit in a corner and listen,” he says.

Not finding the script of his choice is the reason Khan won’t have a release in 2015. “I have been reading scripts but have not zeroed in on anything yet,” he says.

That apart, after five years of working on Satyamev Jayate, whose season 3 finale was aired last month, the team is taking a break. This means he will be spending a lot of time with his family next year. “I always feel I don’t give enough time to my children. When I have the time, I like to be with my family. I love to read and travel too,” Khan says.

His son Azad will probably demand most of his time. When his director wife Kiran Rao went to Himachal Pradesh recently for two weeks to work on a script, he volunteered to take care of him. “The time spent with the family can never be more or enough,” he adds.