When Dabangg happened, Salman and I were an estranged couple. It was teenage love, you see, first crush and all. Maine Pyar Kiya had just released and my newly-born teen self couldn’t help but give away its heart to this handsome, vulnerable looking brat with dopey eyes and a melty smile. Who was this guy?
News of his affairs gave him a romantic image early on, but they refused to stick, the affairs. Something was intriguing about this fellow, never quite got it coz he kept sticking to me.
The affair continued for a few years, and then fell prey to the eleven year itch. The time when Salman was doing stuff like Hello Brother, revamping his ‘nice’ romantic image for a raunchy comic one and going ever so wrong with it. The dark time in every Salman Khan fan’s life.
This was also the time
when the reel-life Prem became a real-life bad boy. The black buck case, the hit-and-run
case, the entire Aishwarya Rai episode, nothing was in his favour. It was easy
to dislike him, or forget him rather.
Until, he won me back with a hud hud. In an instant, all was forgiven.
That’s pretty much the trajectory of any average Salman fan too I guess, and going by the post-Wanted resurrected Khan-following, even if one is not a fan of Salman’s films, one always liked him now, if one had liked him in the past. Somewhat like Narnia. Hint of magic.
The post Dabangg, Salman Khan was a contemporised and far more confident version of his Hello Brother days. In films and in life he seemed to have synthesised both the earlier phases of his life, and landed upon a riper version of what he is capable of on-screen. He merged his romantic hero, action hero, comic hero and bad boy selves in one sweep and that synthesis seemed to have spilled onto real-life displayed in his growing candidness and thoughtfulness in interviews.
Age seemed to have sobered him a wee bit, but hadn’t dulled the edge of his wickedness, just made it more loveable. We lapped him up in reality shows, entertained by the way he engaged us in our living rooms. What had happened suddenly? Who was this guy?
An addition to his personality was the image of a systematic philanthropist. Stories of his charities had always been rife in the industry, but seen by most as an apology for his bad behaviour. Until Salman Khan consolidated his commitment to philanthropy with the Being Human foundation.
Needless to say, it upped his market value far more than his brattiness had done damage. Yet, his demons kept haunting him, always fresh in public memory. Despite this, the fans who had once loyally sported ‘COOL’, the Tere Naam haircut, the six-pack, the blonde streaks in adoration kept doing so. It was Sallu bhai, it didn’t matter what he did, ‘dil ke bahut hi acche hain’. There was something about this guy.
Is it a certain tenderness in the eyes and a certain softness in the smile that has remained unchanged, despite the wrinkles? At 50, he is still single and very eligible. Still a stud, still a bhai. Still Prem. Still trying to shake his past off.
But there is a certain resilience in all that beefy toughness now, its not all bravado anymore. And maybe that’s what we like, we’ll never know. Maybe behind all that seeming simplicity, lies a man we could never imagine exists. Or maybe, there is no man behind there, it’s just what is in front of us and it’s that simple?
Post-script: My
relationship with Salman today stands at indulgent affection yet detached coolness,
middle-aged, somewhat. Would I mind growing old with him? Of course, not! Here’s
to many more, Salman!
(Fatema is a decade-long moonlighter as fiction/non-fiction writer, reviewer and currently enrolled in an adventure sports course called film editing at FTII.)
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