When I met the Bollywood stars: Salman Khan

When cameras start flashing and chronicles your every move, well-preserved Bollywood stars usually put their best foot forward. Even if they are having a terrible day, they flash their biggest grin, grit their whitened teeth and bear the media circus around them. But there’s one star that goes against that grain. Salman Khan. He wears his mercurial moods on his sleeves. Now is that a good thing? Depends.

When you get ten minutes to interview an actor, tiptoeing around him and treating with kid gloves can be taxing for any journalist. In an ideal world, you would want your subject or that actor to wear his game face on, so that you can dust off after your job is done. But with Khan, anything can happen.

It’s no secret that his reputation of being the eternal brat of Bollywood precedes him. His brushes with the law — an acquittal in a hit-and-run accident and poaching endangered species of animals — notwithstanding, he remains one of Bollywood’s biggest draws. Called ‘bhai’ — which means bro — by his cronies and fans alike, Khan can never be charged with being pretentious.

In the multiple occasions that I have met the star, the interviews ranged from uneventful to downright superficial. He’s the kind of actor who will smoke in private, but will deny smoking during an interview fearing that his millions of fans will ape him. At the time of our interaction during Ready, the actor was getting flak for allegedly smoking in an aircraft. He denied those charges with all his might and subsequently lost interest in the interview. It was like a switch had been turned off.

His moods are legendary. Interviews can never be scheduled with the actor, because his mood needs to gauged by his obsequious PR team before they agree to give us some time with the actor. ‘Bhai ka mood’ (Let’s see Bhai’s mood) is a constant refrain with Khan’s fixers and handlers.

But Dubai seems to bring the best in this actor. On majority of the occasions, I have met the actor he has been in a peachy mood. From answering questions about his movies to his perennial bachelorhood, Khan has been quite indulgent. If the movie is bankrolled by his own family or he has this job of promoting his brother-in-law Aayush Sharma, Khan is usually in a jolly mood. But ask him any question that ruffles his feathers and he shuts down.

Case in point: Khan in an interview with reporters in India erroneously trivialised rape to explain the terrible toll that a physically taxing role in a movie had over him. Comparing the trauma of rape to movie role triggered a massive outrage.

When I broached that subject with him during a press junket to Dubai right after his controversial remarks and asked him if he wanted to apologise for his offensive remark, he just pretended to ignore my question and continued promoting his film at hand. As far as ducking questions go, it was a novel one. Ignore any uncomfortable questions and continue to speak inane details about your film.

His brother Sohail Khan, in the background, admonished me for doing my job as a journalist. ‘You shouldn’t have asked that question’, he whispered. But somebody has to do the uncomfortable job. Mollycoddling stars is not in our job profile, but asking the right questions is.