Salman Khan is an actor who evokes strong reactions from people. If you love him, you are an unbending, yagna-conducting, blindly-defending fan. If you hate him, you see him as an abusive, immature, bratty drunkard. It is funny how when discussing about Mr. Khan, we discuss more about his personal life than his acting prowess. Maybe it’s not that surprising since his performances have just about as much range as between a 0.00 and a 0.01.
I actually appreciated the earlier Salman Khan a lot. The lean, boyish Prem in Maine Pyar Kiya stole many young hearts and ever since then his charming innocence has been that one quality that had helped him stay in the heartthrob status. In fact, all the way to Hum Aapke Hain Koun has he consistently provided us with the sometimes-soft-sometimes-naughty loverboy characters. Okay, so they were not award materials, but neither is Spiderman.
And then he underwent a major haul into the casanova category where he went on to parade bare-chested while girls of all shades jiggle around him. People will argue that he does that act well. I won’t dispute that point, especially since it doesn’t seem all that far from his off-screen image. But it was perhaps the much talked about, ill-fated romance with Aishwarya Rai that propelled him to controversial heights. Suddenly, he was being arrested, questioned or speculated for every crime imaginable. From being physical on his porcelain-like girlfriend to stalking the same to plowing over people in a drunken stupor to shooting poor animals to having underworld connections, it appeared Salman Khan had slid through every section in the Indian Penal Code.
And while all that was going on, what happened to his career in movies, you ask. Good question. As the Hiltons and Cruises of the world will boldly testify, there is no such thing as a bad publicity. Salman Khan, too, was enjoying success in the box office. It didn’t matter that now he delivers dialogues through such pursed lips that you have to strain your ears to differentiate between the vowels. It didn’t matter that you have forgotten how he looks like with a shirt on. It didn’t matter that he has been trying to squeal and shriek his way through what David Dhawan calls comedy. It didn’t matter that you don’t need to be a rocket scientist to know what’s his next role going to be like.
Nothing matters for Salman Khan, it seems, who is still keen on romancing and dancing as a 20-year old even when the flab and wrinkles show otherwise. Nothing matters for his fans, who will continue calling the media green-eyed Monsters of Hades for maligning their evangelical Idol.