Being Bhai: How Salman Khan deals with suicidal blackbucks, homicidal Range Rovers

It’s not easy being Bhai. Not by a long shot. Even if, like Bhai, you’re really good at long shots, as certain not-so-recently deceased deer might tell you. Or would, if they hadn’t been shot, except they probably still wouldn’t tell you because a) you don’t speak deer and b) the case has dragged on so long they’d probably be dead by now from old age anyway.

In any case, by which we mean this case, featuring a special cameo appearance by the Arms Act as the villain, all’s well that ends well, at least for Bhai and his fans and the vendors supplying the celebrations. Against an adversary who defeated even courtroom veterans like Sanju Baba, Bhai succeeded, and he didn’t even need to take off his shirt. Once again, just like in the movies, he’s beaten the odds and once again, just like in the movies, nobody is surprised.

But it’s not easy, you know. In fact, it’s really difficult being Bhai. So difficult that nobody else can do it, for which we must all be grateful. But even his most devoted detractors must admit here is no one else who provides as much cause for happiness for his supporters, producing victories in box offices and courtrooms all across the country with an almost monotonous consistency, thrashing baddies by being superhuman and prosecutors just by Being Human. And let’s not forget all the terrible people who’ve tried to bring him down, despite the fact that everyone will tell you that Bhai has a heart of gold.  Like the ungrateful ex-girlfriend he showered in love and Thums-Up, and that churlish upstart Oberoi-with-no-hotels who went crying to the press that Bhai had called him 41 times. Imagine that. Most people would have been thrilled with just one call.  And then he complained that Bhai was ruining his career which was just lies, and the fact that nobody saw him again for the better part of a decade until he had made two public and rather plaintive apologies to Bhai was of course Purely Coincidental, which as it turned out, was also the name of the cosmetic surgery clinic Bhai promised to send him to if he talked to his own girlfriend.

And the list goes on, for the trials and tribulations Bhai has faced are many, and the obstacles more numerous than in his movies, where he can overcome them by just being Bhai. Which in all honesty, is also how he overcomes them in real life, but let’s not worry about that just yet. Instead let’s look at his most famous victory over one of the most vicious anti-Bhai conspiracies of all — when that Range Rover ruined the afterparty by becoming homicidal and attacking those homeless people who were obviously suicidal while Bhai was heading home in the company of his police escort who was soon to be suicidal. And who can forget Bhai’s chaddi-buddy Kamaal Khan? At one point the whole country wanted to know what Kamaal saw that night, at which point he lived up to his name and pulled the seemingly impossible kamaal of managing, in the era of the internet and Facebook and Twitter, to never be seen ever again. And then for 13 years Bhai took the blame, because of that heart of gold we’ve all heard about, to shield a driver nobody had ever heard about, only as it turned out the driver also had a heart of gold and was taking the blame to shield the murderous Range Rover.

But Bhai beat that too, just as he previously beat the old adage that nobody can take a 38-year-old man dressed in pink pants with purple hearts while calling himself a college student seriously. Just as he’ll beat the next case and the next one, until he runs out of cases or the universe runs out of heat, whichever comes first, unless of course Bhai beats up the universe too, for talking to a parallel universe. And even then, nobody will be able to prove that Bhai did it, that universe probably just punched itself in the face. Those rubbing their hands together and murmuring gleefully about justice and the blackbuck case will soon learn of the rampant suicidal tendencies of blackbucks, which probably explains how they came to be endangered in the first place. Or maybe not, but who cares who did it, wasn’t Bhai. But then who killed the black buck, someone will ask. Duh, read the papers, follow some current affairs. Demonetisation killed the black buck, the Prime Minister said so.  It definitely wasn’t Bhai, because as you can see, despite all these instances and all the others, and the ones still to come, it can’t be Bhai, it can never be Bhai, because Bhai has a heart of gold, he really does.

Cold and hard and yellow.