It is mid-afternoon on a balmy Saturday in Lonavla. Salman Khan has been celebrating all week, with family and friends, the marriage of his youngest sister, Arpita. Last night—this morning—they had wrapped up, finally, at around 6 am. But at 10 am, the reputedly irresponsible, selfish man-child of Hindi cinema had reported in at the Bigg Boss lot.
After freshening up, and briefings from the show’s crew on the happenings of the week, he gets into make-up, slips into a custom-fitted suit, and strides into the warehouse-sized shooting stage around 1 pm.
Since then, he has been holding court. The occasional pauses could be because he’s listening to what the control room is telling him via his earpiece, or he could be falling asleep on his feet. But he stays on those feet right through. He banters with the inmates via the live feed from Bigg Boss House, right across the alley, on the big screen, and in the pauses between sequences, he takes long swigs of some energy drink in an unbranded bottle.
The audience is lapping it all up. They’ve paid to be there, and they’re getting their money’s worth. He loosens the top button of his shirt. Later, the jacket comes off, and is dropped on stage, and later still, shirtsleeves are rolled up. But the swagger stays intact, all the time. This man is enjoying himself.
And then, at 5.30 pm, they’re done, and star and his entourage stride off to the villa reserved for his use. Shooting is done for the episode that will air tonight.
***
Later—but not very much later—I am sitting in a gazebo in the villa’s garden, setting out my notebook and recorder. The evening light has begun to fade. A figure in track-suit pants and T-shirt, a glass of cola in hand, walks out, slowly, looking a little… dazed. He reaches out a brawny arm to shake hands. I have steeled myself for a bone-crusher, but it is a perfunctory clasp, barely touching.
When he turns 49 later this month, he could be forgiven a satisfied grin as he looks back at 2014. Two movies vaulted into the Rs 100 crore club. (Jai Ho’s net collection at the Indian box office alone was Rs 110 crore, and Kick’s was Rs 233 crore.) He’d even sung a song in one, widening his repertoire. His brand endorsements now also include Astral Pipes, Dixcy Scott, Relaxo. Thums Up and Yatra. Bigg Boss’s eighth season has seen him resume his familiar place in households all over India. Career-wise, this has been the best year of his life.
He sits down, lets out a deep, long gust of a breath. I ask him to reflect on the nature of stardom. His eyes are closed. He seems to barely notice. The fatigue oozes from him. In the gloaming, with only the light from the villa dimly illuminating him, something about him—and it’s not the rippling biceps—reminds me of an older Sylvester Stallone, the one after way too many Rocky sequels.
Then, he opens his eyes, looks at a point just over my shoulder and takes another deep breath, and a long exhalation that, when I listen to the recording later, is almost a yawn. Something he does repeatedly through our chat.
“To look back and say I always knew it, would be a lie. To now say I know what’s going to happen in the future, what level I’m going to take it to, would also be a lie,” he says. “Nobody wants to be a failure. Neither did I. But mere bolne se kya hota hai? [Who am I to say anything?] If it stops with my acting, and then I become a character actor, chilling at some farmhouse with family or children, I’m a failure. My profession has got to continue after my death… for thousands and thousands of years after my death. This...” he gestures around him, “is just a stepping stone. I don’t know if I can pull it off. You never know. But one small mistake. Could. Finish. Everything”.
“A certain amount of fear has set in, which should never have been… because if you want to do something so large, if you want to take it to a different level altogether, you have to be fearless.”
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