Just Who Is Shirish Kunder?

On Monday, we told you how Shah Rukh Khan bashed up Shirish Kunder at Sanjay Dutt's Agneepath party.

Who is this chap who provoked Badshah Khan's ire?

Film editor and now director Shirish Kunder's celebrityhood is born out of his marriage to Farah Khan, one of Bollywood's most successful choreographers and director of films like Main Hoon Na, Om Shanti Om -- both produced by Shah Rukh Khan -- and Tees Maar Khan.

While Kunder is waiting for bigger things to happen to him with films like Joker (starring Akshay Kumar) and Kick (starring Farah's friend Salman Khan) in the pipeline, he is said to be the cause for the Farah-SRK break-up.

How did this Mangalore native become the subject of headlines?

Shirish, 38, is an electronics engineer by training and worked for Motorola before hitting Bollywood.

The first film he worked on as an editor was the Sunny Deol and Manisha Koirala-starrer Champion that released in 2000.

He edited films like the Amitabh Bachchan-starrer Aankhen (Director: Vipul Shah) in 2002, Farah Khan's Main Hoon Na and Imtiaz Ali's first film Socha Na Tha.

It was in the editing room when he was cutting Main Hoon Na with Farah that love came-a-calling.

Farah and Shirish married in 2004. Two years later, the movie editor turned director with Jaan-E-Mann in 2006, starring Salman Khan and Akshay Kumar. The film didn't do well, though it had some good songs.

Salman and SRK were still friends then; their falling out would occur a couple of years later at Katrina Kaif's birthday party.

Farah was one of SRK's best buddies -- there was even talk that Shirish and she would move into an apartment in the building SRK was building behind his mansion, Mannat.

Somewhere down the line, for reasons that are as cloaked in mystery as Karisma Kapoor's break-up with Abhishek Bachchan, Shirish got SRK's goat.

Farah and SRK parted ways on a rather sour note when the superstar turned down Tees Maar Khan, which Shirish had written.

Farah had to make a choice between the father of her triplets and the man who had made her a big director. She chose hubby.

While Farah and SRK maintained a dignified silence on what had gone wrong, Shirish, who is quite active on Twitter, made his feelings clear on the microblogging site.

The last straw for SRK was apparently when Shirish tweeted the evening Ra.One was released: 'I just heard a 150 Cr firework fizzle.'

Kunder had also retweeted a post by one of his followers: 'Very funny :-) @tkspirithuman: @ShirishKunder The super hero in Ra One has all the powers in the world but to entertain.'

In the weeks that followed, SRK and Shirish's paths didn't cross, not even at the Screen/Zee/Filmfare awards, all of which SRK hosted. But when it did, Boof! Bazoom! Kaput!

Just before Sunday's incident at the Agneepath party, the Mumbai Mirror newspaper claimed SRK mentioned that he had promised his children he would slap Shirish for that hurtful tweet.

Farah Khan denied that her husband had provoked SRK, but newspaper accounts pieced together from guests present early on Monday morning alleged that Shirish had needled the superstar.

The morning after he finally made the front pages, the Joker director tweeted: 'Some of your jokes on the incident were very funny. Including the ones on me. Keep up the humour. I'll be back soon.'

Farah and Shirish do not plan to file a police complaint against SRK. 'Thanks for all your concern & wishes,' Shirish tweeted. 'We are very grateful. Contrary to rumours, we have no intention of filing a FIR or police complaint.'

When the maar-peet was going on, newspapers reported that SRK told Shirish to tell his 'friend' that he would take care of him too, not so politely, of course.