Bajrangi Bhaaijan: How could it have been made

You have a life that is the dream of most and envy of the others. You are close to fifty, single and supposedly virgin.  You are treated like a cult by your fans and people all over the country chant your name as one of the living legends (even though you didn’t do anything remotely as such to reach that stature). You are th

e king of kings, you are Sallu Miya!

And what happens when you star Sallu Miya in a film and release it on Eid? It not only breaks all records of the box office but also establishes new ones. And when the movie has a story and a message, oh my god, this is a sure shot formula of success. Adhering to the formula, Bajrangi Bhaaijan is making ridiculous amounts of money.

 Bajrangi Bhaaijan is nothing different from one of his earlier movies like Ready or Kick. Even here, he does get to play himself on screen (keep reading, all of you who thought he was acting. Allow me to convince you). The only slight difference here, however, is that with director Kabir Khan taking the lead behind the camera, our Sallu Bhai shows his human side rather than the dashing muscular protector of family and friends (look at Dabaang, Ready and pretty much anything else). The other similarity of Bajrangi Bhaaijan with his other films is that even here he dances to songs with minimum limb movements. And one has to admit that he has mastered that art really well.

When you are almost worshipped by people and your word becomes the law (okay, this was a bit exaggerated but you get the point), you have some social responsibility, a man with a sane mind would point out. And that social responsibility yells to be taken care of when you are convicted of some crime and a section of society frowns upon you. Whether to punish you or let you go becomes a matter of political intellect and could severely affect your country’s economy.

So here you stood. On one side you had a set of devoted fans who would do anything for you (this was evident on social media when the trial was on) and on the other you had pseudo intellectuals who having googled a little bit about what was going on had taken upon themselves the charge to arrange protest marches seeking justice. You knew that your fandom was at stake but you couldn’t afford to leave it that way. You had to devise something to control the situation. So what could you do, given the fact that you could only play yourself in movies, having lost the practice of pretending to be someone else on the screen?

‘Eureka!’ Kabir Khan might have said.

‘You are a person with a huge heart and let’s show that side of you,’ he might have went on, enthusiastically about his new found golden idea. He must have went on to convince Salman how the portrayal of his ‘Being Human’ side could resolve the situation in this time of crisis. He could add a brilliant moving message at the end and fulfill his social responsibility as well as a few subtle ones to convince the people how innocent he is (he doesn’t speak lies in the movie and is too respectful of everything and everyone around him, even monkeys) which would stick to the audience’s mind and would come of his aid when they sat down to analyze his criminal side. 

And it was done. Bajrangi Bhaaijan sells out to be one of the biggest hits ever and washes box office records like they didn’t matter. Our Sallu Miya gets back all his fans he was on the verge of losing and like every Bollywood movie (and incidentally this one), the story has a happy ending.

The rest remains history, to be spoken about another day.