Hero without a script

For long, Salman Khan has lived the 'troubled boy with a heart of gold' paradigm. But he forgot that every tragic hero has a fatal flaw

 

They lined the hallways in the four-storied Mumbai Sessions Court from 2 p.m., with cell phones on camera mode, waiting for their hero, sentenced only minutes earlier to five years in prison in a 2002 hit-and-run case. A mother pulling a toddler who wanted a glimpse, spur-of-the-moment freelance reporters, fans cloaked in lawyers' robes, adoring plaintiffs in other cases, even constables peering from courtroom grilles, fingers cocked to click a picture. He did not emerge in the dramatic pause that followed the sentence. Actor Salman Khan, 49, was still seated in his witness box in court room 402, head hanging, shoulders drooping, looking at his hands, awaiting the copy of the judgment that held him guilty of culpable homicide not amounting to murder.

His family huddled around him protectively. Sohail Khan looked out of the window. Brother-in-law Atul Agnihotri leaned against the wall and looked at the ceiling. Sister Alvira held her angular chin pensively. There was no dramatic cuffing and escorting by assembled constables. There were no tears. There was no poetic justice for a hero wronged. In moments, the script had changed. Salman's face had crumpled inwardly on the stand as the matter-of-fact verdict was spoken so gently it was almost missed. He looked around and looked at the judge, the unassuming D.W. Deshpande, again. That was when he knew: the producers and actors were no longer in charge of this production. The script had finally run away from Salman.
father Salim Khan had expressed disappointment that audiences were failing the do-gooding hero of Jai Ho, whose protagonist Jai Agnihotri was modelled on Salman himself. By then, Salman had acquired a reputation for offering medical aid to those in need and employment to underprivileged youths through his Being Human foundation. Close family friend and Vice Chancellor of the Maulana Azad National Urdu University, Zafar Sareshwala, says 40 cheques are sent out by the family every day for those in need. Actresses of the calibre of Tabu and Nadira Babbar actively participated in a film that had nothing to recommend it other than it being intertwined with Salman's life. "He'd just decided that everyone should do what he does," Salim said, explaining its raison d'etre. The distinction between his philanthropy and his filmography was being steadily deleted. Salman Khan was becoming his image.
It was a personal journey that began in 1989 with Maine Pyar Kiya, Baaghi (1990), which he co-wrote with his father, and Patthar Ke Phool (1991). In each, Salman became the underdog fighting for friendship, rebellion, love. Misunderstood, criminalised, he charted a path of the hero who overcomes his circumstances no matter what, emerging as an image of masculine triumph for the masses. He wielded two kinds of movies: the romantic comedy and the action thriller. As a composite, he began to define masculinity for an entire generation. Animation filmmaker Gitanjali Rao, speaking at the Asia Society on gender, points out, "Salman becomes the image of masculinity for a whole generation of young adolescents cut off from parental role models and seeking a substitute male role model. This is why you find men more outside his home in Bandra than women." In film after film, mischief was forgivable, love triumphed, indiscretions were glossed over, and goodness was sufficient to mitigate crime. "When you play beyond the law for so long, you begin to believe you are above the law," says Jerry Pinto, author of Helen: The Life and Times of an H-Bomb, who believes that Salman began to spawn a boys-will-be-boys culture in which all bad boys must be forgiven. Salman of the 1990s could not be accused of maturity or grace and frequently got into fisticuffs with photographers, walked out of interviews in which he didn't like the questions, and was famous for general brawling. "Salman becomes a symptom of a larger culture of entitlement and privilege which hundreds of thousands of young boys everywhere connect with and seek to emulate," Pinto says.
By 2002, when the accident happened, it was a formula that was working. Salman was dating actress Aishwarya Rai, working with Sanjay Leela Bhansali, a director then at his peak, and Bollywood was in the throes of fending off threats from the underworld on films such as Chori Chori Chupke Chupke (2001). He was young, brash, playing with fire, and win-ning. On the morning of the accident, September 27, 2002, a leading newspaper put out an article in which Rai spoke of their abusive relationship. She talked about an inebriated Salman; a boyfriend who wouldn't take no for an answer; who barged in on her work space and got her thrown out of films for not complying with his wishes. She said she was speaking up because it was affecting her career. "Let others say what they want. But every person concerned knows the truth. God is the witness," she said. It painted the picture of a persistent man who feared few consequences.
Outwardly, the Khan household seemed to be growing more and more cosmopolitan in the meantime. Of Salim Khan's two wives, one is the famous Helen. Arbaaz Khan's wife is another former screen siren, Malaika Arora. But sources suggest that it was also a very conservative household in certain respects. Internally, the family was running on a skewed dynamic that could be possible, and logical, only in a film script. Salim Khan controlled the purse strings and all decisions. They also point to a difficult, strict childhood for Salman in real life that pushed him into a polar opposite over-masculin-ised image on the screen.
The Khan household had always been philanthropic and old residents of Bandra and members of the film industry are brimming with stories of their giving. Their universal descriptor is "good people", an inheritance that Salman proudly carries. "It is not in the nature of the Khans not to stop and help, which is why I refuse to believe the reports that Salman ran away from the accident site," says Sareshwala. The family's paradoxes have also been increasingly shaped and shouldered by Salman after the accident.
What the 2002 accident achie- ved was that it halted Salman in his tracks. Television honcho Amit Khanna, a friend of Salim Khan's, recalls how the actor changed after it. "He was a very different person back then-brash, rash, irresponsible. Clearly, after the incident, he began to change. The Salman you see today is not the Salman of 15 years ago."
The loss of the life of Nurullah Mehboob Sharif, who was sleeping on the pavement outside Bandra's American Express bakery, under the wheels of his car clearly weighing on him, Salman meandered for a while. It was whispered that he couldn't be relied upon to complete films any longer. The dovetailing with his cinematic presence, the belief that he was a wronged and misunderstood hero in real life, was already coming to the fore. When director Puneet Issar was asked about Garv in 2004, he admitted that the misunderstood hero of the film was modelled on Salman.
As conviction took root, Salman began to play himself with more fervour on the big screen, going on to become the founder and president of Bollywood's Rs 100-crore club. Partner (2007), Wanted (2009) and Dabangg (2010) resurrected him from the post-Rai, post-accident stupor, and Ek Tha Tiger in 2012 got the highest first-day collection of Rs 32 crore. By then, Salman was fully living the 'troubled, misunderstood boy with the heart of gold' paradigm.
In an interview to this writer in 2012, he admitted to sticking with hosting Bigg Boss because to him it mimicked his life in a glass box, always open to public scrutiny. "My bedroom is my space, but my living room is the world's," Salman said, adding that he enjoyed the show because he wanted to give people a chance to see the real person, not the one they created out of their own perceptions. By the time Kick (2014) came along, beating even Ek Tha Tiger's record by grossing Rs 225.1 crore, Salman the do-gooder was being immortalised on the big screen.
Salman's role today as the hub of the industry, for which he is a bankable star and a dependable core, explains the outpouring of grief at his conviction. Once the verdict had sunk in, it was Salman who was sitting in the witness box laughing and joking, trying to boost his deflated family. His position as the hero, the benefactor has become so ingrained that he plays the patron saint even in the hour of need.
The mistake that this generation of Bollywood is making, says Khanna, is assuming that goodness can mitigate a crime. "It can't. They are two disjointed things," he says. Much of the conflation comes from the conjoined image of the Salman effect on and off screen.