The life of films in theatres is short and therefore the lives of billboards and posters advertising them even shorter. Soon enough, another poster, that of Ek Tha Tiger starring Salman Khan, replaced Shora’s favourite. She, of course, was too little to fully comprehend what her father did, leave alone know about the shelf life of a film poster. In the pure innocence of childhood, she got very angry. In her eyes Salman Khan became this mean guy who had ripped off her father’s poster and replaced it with his own. She asked who he was and when she learnt it was a man named Salman Khan, she began to hate him instantly. Whenever she happened to spot a photograph of Salman Khan—which, given where we were living, was hard to avoid—she used to slap it with the full fury of a two-year-old. When I would ask her why, she would say, ‘He removed your poster, Papa! He is a bad guy! I hate him!’
Eventually, Kick released. Towards the end of the film, Salman Khan picks me up, throws me across and beats me badly. Shora has inherited my short temper. So this enraged her immediately. ‘How dare this guy beat my papa!’ she fumed. She happens to be extremely protective about me, so much so that she cannot even bear it if her mum says anything against me or scolds me gently. She will shout right back, shielding me like a mother cat shielding her kitten against the minutest of threats. Then imagine how terribly irate she was to see a man beating her father up. And this was not just any man but the very man who had apparently torn her father’s poster and replaced it with his.
Towards the end of the shooting of Bajrangi Bhaijaan, we shot a song. Shora had tagged along with me that day. I was in the make-up room at the YRF (Yash Raj Films) Studios when my driver, Ashok, took her to meet Salman Khan. She came face-to-face with her arch-enemy for the very first time. She was quiet but he came and hugged her. Shora’s mind changed instantly! She immediately became very fond of him and the hate she had harboured for such a long time evaporated, leaving no trace, as if it had never existed in the first place.
‘Papa! Papa!’ she came running to me soon after in the make-up room.
‘What happened, Shora?’ I asked, holding her in my lap.
‘Salman Khan is a lovely guy, Papa!’ she blurted out instantly.
‘But you hate him, right?’ I said in amusement.
‘No! Not at all! He is a wonderful guy. He even hugged me,’ she said.
And so just like that, Shora joined the big fan club of little ones who love Salman Khan. Ask children who their favourite film star is and the most common answer you’ll get is Salman Khan. There is indeed something special about Salman—children are drawn to him by some inexplicable magical force.
Shora is the real star in our family, right from the very day she was born. It is not because she excels in dramatics at her school. It is in the way she behaves, the way she is, perhaps the royal traits she has inherited from my grandfather. The wish of our little lovable queen is our—and by ‘our’ I don’t just mean Aaliya and me, but also all my brothers, Ammi and most of all, Shamas—command.
* * *
After having seen so much, little surprises me. But the innocence of my daughter never fails to astound me. I am sure this is the case with all children but the children I interact with the most happen to be my own. Hence, theirs is the innocence I see. During the premiere of Bajrangi Bhaijaan, I took her along. As it happens every time, we were mobbed by the paparazzi on the way back and we were making a narrow escape in our car. Shora sat on my lap in the front, as I waved and rolled the window half-way down. Many star children enjoy the limelight, the camera shutters, the bright flashlights—they are used to these. Not this one though, or at least she was not back then. We were crawling at a snail’s pace through the giant crowd that had gathered which included both the media and fans. My child, who had just stepped out of her toddler years and entered girlhood, lost her temper. Being perched like that gave her a view of exactly what was going on. She shouted back at the cameras, ‘Leave my dad alone! Go away!’ she screamed at them, again like a protective cat might to shield her kittens from potential danger. ‘Go away!’ However, the media found this utterly adorable and so instead of going away, the shutters clicked louder, the flashes flashed faster, blinding us.
Shora has seen many stars, including Shah Rukh Khan and Salman Bhai. She is very aware of my line of work. The only time she was star-struck was when she saw the little child actor who played the role of a notorious chubster in Freaky Ali. She did the entire caricature of a swooning and fainting fan at the sight of her most beloved
