He is still looking at the blade. Some details can be reported from this distance. Between his black shorts and black Harley Davidson cap, there is hair sprouting on what first seemed to be a barren chest. He is what Simi Garewal would call "a man man". He looks up with somewhat severe eyes. "No personal questions," he says. "If you want to write personal things, write anything you want brother, just don't say I said it." And then, looking away at the distant hills, he says, "What's it about Tere Naamat I should talk about?"
You have crossed a line as an actor.
"What?"
You have crossed a line as an actor.
"Who said that?"
People.
"Fools," he says. "Everybody knows I cannot act." Then he keeps quiet. He is merely underplaying. No man, not even a star, can resist the full force of flattery. He has heard from "people" that with Tere Naam he has landed at the very doorsteps of reputation. He likes the compliments. He casually asks for more "reactions" and then dismisses it all with a slow wave of the hand. "I did a lot of howling and crying," he says. "I find it easier than the stuff I used to do before." At this point he begins to cut his nails with the blade.
Why don't you use a nail-cutter like other people?
He starts giggling. "Doesn't work for me," he says. A practised false intensity is slowly developing cracks. He finds it funny that he cuts his nails this way but quickly returns to gravitas. "In my other films I have to do a lot of buffoonery. I find that more difficult because my sense of timing in comedy sucks."
But it's said you were very earnest, very involved in the making of Tere Naam, very dedicated.
"Who said that?"
Satish Kaushik.
"He would say that. He made the film. He is the director. He'd say it was the best f****** performance I have ever given." At this point he begins to howl holding a finger. But he hasn't cut it with the blade. He is just pretending. And the men around, the beasts of Salman's burden, all laugh. "There was nothing difficult about Tere Naam. It was just another film." It was around the time when the film was being made that he ran over pedestrians in a Mumbai suburb, killing one.
How did you manage to work in the middle of all this?
Salman now stops chopping his nails. He curls his lips while looking at something far away because there is something about the question he likes. It's somewhat funny when a well-built bare-chested man turns philosophical. "After darkness comes light. The good thing about bad things is that they come to an end." He says as though with a tinge of experience, "You know there are guys, you keep hitting them and they keep getting up. I am something like that".
Is it true you've become a nicer person?
"I am the same. I have not changed. As a person or actor. All the films I am going to do now are regular big commercial stuff."
There goes the peg.
