Devapriya Sanyal’s Salman Khan The Man The Actor The Legend review: Decoding Salman Khan

Steering clear of the actor's controversial life, a new biography focuses on India’s notion of stardom and celebrity instead

A recent bout of illness and feeling all round wretched had me turning to my favourite comfort food — Hindi movies (I refuse to call them Bollywood movies) from the 1990s. That I was simultaneously reading Devapriya Sanyal’s Salman Khan The Man The Actor The Legend, a deconstruction of bhai’s celebrity, proved an adequate road map to my film choices...

Rather than start with Salman Khan’s big, fat blockbuster, Maine Pyaar Kiya (1989), I chose Hum Aapke Hain Koun..! (1994), also directed by Sooraj Barjatya (who had made his directorial debut with Maine Pyaar Kiya). The film, which cemented Khan as a bonafide star, actually gave his co-star, Madhuri Dixit, higher billing, a fact which Sanyal’s book mentions.

Hum Aapke Hain Koun..! unlike that other game-changer of the ‘90s, Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge (1995), has not aged well, Dixit’s phulkari-inspired jacket notwithstanding. The film plays out like a loosely strung together series of incidents, songs and comic interludes. How is a dog playing an umpire at a cricket match supposed to be funny is one of those unsolved mysteries. And while we are on the topic, hope Tuffy, the dog, was treated right on set.

Sanyal’s book mostly steers clear of all the scandals and controversies that followed Khan like faithful shadows. While there is mention of the 2002 hit-and-run case, his tumultuous relationship with Aishwarya Rai and its fallout, and the blackbuck hunting and Arms Act violations cases, the book focuses on decoding Khan and India’s notion of stardom and celebrity through his career.

What little we glimpse of Khan is through his good friend Kailash Surendranath’s reminiscences. Surendranath, who knew Khan from his days as an eager 15-year-old getting his first break in modelling for Campa Cola (remember?) to his decade-spanning superstardom, remembers Khan dropping by for late night paratha-bhurji (scrambled eggs) and his motto for working on his body — “When you have no work, work on yourself.”

An introduction sets out what Sanyal intends to do through the book in great detail. The shortest chapter is the one called ‘With Human Failings’, which lists Khan’s headline-grabbing misbehaviour. His public brawls and brushes with the law are explained away as the cost of celebrity, which does not cut much ice as one cannot sweep bad and outright criminal behaviour under the carpet of “boys will be boys”. The book is at its weakest when trying to defend Khan’s toxicity.

On the other hand, Sanyal’s book is its most engaging when deconstructing Khan through his roles especially in the chapter, ‘The Journey from Prem to Chulbul Pandey’. The chapter introduces the concept of the Emploi, “a theoretical framework as developed by Erving Goffman in his book, Frame Analysis.” The emploi, Sanyal posits “is a category that accounts for the close interaction between performance and reception.”