Salman Khan to the rescue

It must have been about five years ago, sometime after Wanted released. We had just come out of a disconcerting theatrical experience in a Delhi multiplex, where men of all ages sat feet up in lounge chairs, spilling their guts into giant bags of popcorn, cheering a seriously violent vigilante Radhe played by Salman Khan, in a film that would mark his return to popular imagination. (Or so we thought. In reality, Khan never left the Indian male imagination.) Meanwhile, in Meerut, a friend reported, groups of men went to watch Bhai’s latest offering, and at a crucial moment in the film, just as Bhai seems beaten by the villain, they took off their shirts en masse and roared, “Bhaijaan, Bhaijaan, Bhaijaan,” and shirts were flung at the screen. As if on cue, Khan tore off his own shirt. Muscles ripped. Blood spilt. The friend who kept his shirt on said he could taste the adrenalin in his mouth.

Four years later, we were in Janki Talkies, Nagpur, at the first-day-first-show of Khan’s Jai Ho, to try and understand the many meanings behind this pagan ritual. We had been shooting our documentary, Being Bhaijaan, with Shan Ghosh, a Khan lookalike by profession and passion, and ‘Junior Salman’ of Nagpur. He is ‘hamara Salman’ on the Jai Salman WhatsApp group, and a beloved bhai to textile salesman Balram and ‘engineer-at-heart’ Bhaskar. Along with other Salman Khan fans, we watched Jai Ho, breathless and moist-eyed, knowing that we were recording the boys’ collective search for a larger identity to replace the very ordinary one life had handed out to them.

Mard hone ka matlab kya hai (what’s the definition of a man), we had asked boys and men across Uttar Pradesh, Delhi and parts of Kolkata, researching for the documentary. Aukaat (stature), they replied. Pehchaan (identity), said others. We talked to Salman fans in cities and cities-in-the-making, where the star’s strongest fan base lies. Many of these boys were at the cusp of manhood, looking for a code to abide by. “You know, what being a Bhai means? It means everyone is going to look up to you,” said Kaif, 22, from Orai, UP. Being a Bhai seems a logical aspiration, actually. Since, the only way men defined themselves was through the roles they played. I’m a son. I’m a brother. I’m a friend. I will be a father. Not knowing where they stand, and what they should want, the grandiose lexicon of patriarchy comes to their rescue. Honour, duty, protect, provide, respect, stature — aukaat — that word, over and over again. “When people look at me they should say, ‘Woh dekho, Bhaskar jaa raha hai’,” says the grandson of a well-known wrestler in Nagpur who died in penury. “Just the way they would say, ‘Woh dekho Madho Pehelwan jaa raha hai,’” he says, surrounded by wires, designing a “top-secret product” for Salman Bhai.

Just a few years ago, India was being celebrated for having the largest number of young people in the world. Today, economists consider it a demographic nightmare. Gleaming India, one which Shah Rukh Khan represented, doesn’t seem true anymore for anybody, especially for unemployed boys fighting hard to find a purpose. Salman Khan took the stories back to mofussil India, and in film after film, stood as its protector. He also brought back the vardi, or police uniform, one that had all but disappeared after the spoils of globalisation made it irrelevant. He was clearly onto something. Vikram, 22, from Behraich said, “Three lakh engineers come out of each state every year. If I continue as an engineer, I’ll just be one of them. My dream is to be in the IPS. Everybody respects a uniform.”

Izzat (respect). This too came up repeatedly, like one of god’s own names. “Especially, when a girl says ‘aap’. Aajkal to saari ladkiyan ‘tu’ bolti hain (these days girls don’t use the higher register of address),” says Balram, as he sets up a new page for the Jai Salman group on Facebook to rescue it from trolls. “The way Sonakshi Sinha says it…” he adds, blushing.

We’re sitting in a sea of cafes in Safdarjung Development Area, roughly half an hour and two civilisations away from Najafgarh. Rajesh, 35, points out various groups of men, most are friends or friend’s friends, since all Jats are brothers, really. He shares tales of growing up in bordering Haryana, of a new rush of money, of falling in love with women you were only allowed to watch from the terrace. Of never being touched by a woman, in case you got killed. “When we came here first, we were so shocked. We saw all these women. They talked differently. They wore different clothes. It was mesmerising. Everyone fell in love. Madly. The women used them, ditched them. The men just didn’t understand.”

This complete bafflement at the “new woman” often comes out as suspicion. Stories abound in small-town India, in big-town India, in cafes and bars, in chai shops and at the barber’s, that she, the woman, broke his heart. She left him. She said no. “Even Salman Bhai is unmarried because of this,” says Shan aka Junior Salman. “Because he said he’ll marry a woman with the sanskar (values) of his mother. But those girls are no longer in the market.”

While the Indian woman was finding a new language to fight patriarchy, while she was learning to say no, the Indian man found himself rudderless, set out at sea. Rejection is a powerful force. And in Salman Khan’s films, the woman never says no.

Salman Khan, a protector of folk-hero proportions, is impervious to a failed liberalisation dream. Khan embodies the narrative of self-reliance. ‘Mujhpe ek ehsaan karna, ke mujh-pe koi ehsaan na karna’ (Do me the favour of not doing a favour). Shohini Ghosh, professor, essayist and filmmaker, who has been working with masculinity and fandom, and has a chapter on Khan in her PhD, once told us, “For anybody who has not been on top of the post-liberalisation boom of the last decade, for anybody who has witnessed the liberalisation benefits but from far, who have brushed against it but not ridden it… they like Salman Khan… And since, in today’s country, you can’t depend on anyone else and the system will fail you — your body will be your only weapon.”

There are more gyms in small-town India than cyber cafes. A gym trainer in Chhindwara, dressed in a fitted red T-shirt with a plunging V neckline, says, “Every hero today has a six-pack. But it all started with (the song) O O Jaane Jaana, when Bhai took off his shirt.” These men-only gyms have been crafting a new body for the Indian male, a Kshatriya body, which relies heavily on upper-body strength. More importantly, it’s a body on display, like a painting, joyous and hairless. If Michelangelo were to paint today, he’d set his canvas on the streets of Meerut and Chhindwara.

At various points in history, we’re reminded what it is to be men and women, lest we forget, lest society dissolve. We’re taught to protect ourselves against a cruel world, lest we forget, that to live is to fight. For men and women suffer equally, cry equally, to create an identity under an overwhelmingly patriarchal society. If we had feminism to help us through this mess, Bhai fans, it seems, have Salman Khan. 

Source:http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/features/blink/cover/salman-khan-to-the-rescue/article6793333.ece