Salman: A Decade of See-Sawing Fortunes
by Vivek Vaswani
Being the son of writer Salim Khan, Salman was born and brought up in the film industry. In 1988-89 Salman Khan was known more for his liaisons, first with a girl called Shaheen and later the then top model Sangeeta Bijlani. Nothing much would have happened to Salman as he was then assisting Shashi Lal Nair in Falak and he was just a nice, good looking guy. Even Salim himself did not have much faith in Salman. So he was much on his own as he pursued an acting career and about that time met Sooraj Barjatya, grandson of Tarachand Barjatya of Rajshri Productions. Things were not going too well for the Barjatyas then, even though they were forty films old and a major force in distribution and exhibition of films.
Sooraj, for his script, had envisioned his own Prem and Suman and they happened to be Salman Khan and Bhagyasree. And thus Salman found himself in Maine Pyar Kiya, winning over other contenders like Deepak Tijori. To be honest, the industry sniggered. Nobody believed Salman had an aptitude for acting, or the diligence that Aamir Khan and others had started showing, or the charisma of Jackie, Anil, Sanjay Dutt.
The Rajshri vehicle, a vegetarian film as it was called, was also not considered the right launch. But when MPK released, it was the biggest film of the year, winner of seven Filmfare awards and also the biggest grosser the film industry had ever seen by raking 40 crores at the box-office. Sooraj's clarity of thought and simplistic script appealed to the whole country and they were caught in the beautiful music and talented performances. The film ran for 100 weeks all over the country and was dubbed not just into Tamil and Telugu but also Spanish and other languages.
History was made. And Salman Khan was definitely made. His next lot of movies, Paththar Ke Phool, introducing Raveena Tandon, Baaghi, introducing Nagma and Sanam Bewafa , Chandni were all hits. 1990 and '91 belonged to Salman Khan. The super success of Saajan, in which he starred for the first time with an established heroine, Madhuri was a bonus and it turned out to be the biggest hit of 1991. Thus Salman Khan became a superstar. Completely unpopular with the press, he was called the Super Brat. He was considered arrogant, rude and badly behaved by a large section of the press who had banned him, superstar status notwithstanding.
However this led to Phase Two in which Salman was almost wiped out. Jagruti, Ek Ladka Ek Ladki, Dil Tera Aashiq, Chandramukhi, Chand Ka Tukda and a host of other badly made films completely destroyed the Salman Khan legend and '93 -'94 were tedious years for Salman. Nobody was interested in touching the boy or his films. There are always people ready to tolerate arrogance from superstars but nobody wanted to tolerate an arrogant flash in the pan.
In this entire imbroglio only one man had faith in Salman and that was Sooraj Barjatya. Sooraj had finished scripting for his second movie, Hum Aapke Hai Koun and cast the two original Rajshri discoveries Salman Khan and Madhuri Dixit. Now the industry did not snigger, instead they speculated. The MPK feat was difficult to equal, however Sooraj overcame that and did better. Hum Aapke Hai Koun grossed MPK ten times over with a mammoth 200 crore rupee Indian box-office turnover. Pile on it the overseas business and the film became a six hundred print wonder and the trade and the press had to sit up and take a good second look at Salman Khan's acting potentials. Hence we have this Khan back at the top where he was ten years ago, this time much more secure and sure of his position.
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