Salman Khan: Jai Ho

Every time around this time Salman Khan is in the news because of Big Boss and every season of the reality show with the sheer presence of Khan gets bigger and better. For some mysterious reason Salman gets more and more popular and entertaining with his audience.

In the last few years, Khan has gone through many transitions both as an actor and as a human being. He is easily the biggest star at the box-office and as a human being he will go out of the way for anybody and any cause he cares for. I recapture my conversations with the actor who I usually bump into every time I visit a senior actress living in the same building.

Salman Khan is sitting in the lawns of his building Galaxy, Bandra, surrounded by his friends who include his manager Reshma Shetty, his designer and a budding writer eager to narrate him his story.

As my car drives into the compound Salman waves out to me cheerfully signaling me to join him and I’m more than willing.

Salman and I have an old continuity where he asks me what’s up with the film fraternity and I tell him what the rest of India is thinking about him. Excerpts from a chat:

Yes, the jannat and the jahnnum concept seem to be working. There is always something good and bad happening in everybody’s lives. From the time we were kids we have heard the phrase that heaven and hell is all here. We have transferred that to the BB house. I thought we did a good job with the promo and now the contestants and the audience too have got accustomed with the concept.

The observations are many. The human being is more complex than we can ever imagine and a human being in stress can be the best or the worst person to deal with. In BB participants have to fight ordinary circumstances and emerge winners. They face extreme temperatures, food and sleep deprivations and are constantly in the company of so many people and so many cameras, not easy at all, in a way I’m their only connect with the outside world.

I’m involved in what is happening to them just in the way the audience is involved and that is the attraction of the show. We watch it for the fights and the soft moments, we are all looking for the good and the ugly side of life. When there are happy moments we are joyous and when there are ugly moments, we feel upset. Life is like that too!

How do I answer such a question? The best way to deal with such a situation is to not react.

Yes and they give me constructive feedback to improve the show and myself. They watch other shows too. Dad his favorite channels and mom has her favorite shows, I watch whatever they watch and when I’m alone I watch whatever is going on. There is always too much on my mind to think of changing channels.

(Smiles) I can’t tell you all because even I don’t know what I’m thinking… it changes from moment to moment but mostly related to planning the day and schedules, fixing meetings and juggling time to compress as much as I can.

It is wonderful that all our films are doing good business and it is even better if all the actors are performing well at the box-office. It is because we are making better films and working hard. I have never understood the number game and never chased it. I believe that if a film is good, it will click at the box-office and touch the heart of the viewer, if not nothing can help.

By being honest to his art, we are living in super times when we have so many theatres, so many investors, so many big and small actors, so many writers and so many willing audiences ready for all kinds of cinema. Today, even promotion of our films happens on multiple mediums like print/ radio and digital media. We must make the most of all these opportunities.

Yes, the media has a way of finding new stories related to a new film. Lately we have been thinking of changing the title of the film. While some of us connected with the project seem to like ‘Mental’, my dad Salim Khan has suggested ‘Jai Ho’ and in all probabilities we will go by his instinct.

Bhawana Somaaya /@ bhawanasomaaya