Salman Khan is angry. Not just on screen but off it too. He takes a chair in front of Daisy Shah's vanity van in the parking lot of Mehboob Studio. "Kya karoon? How can I convince people that my intentions are true, yeh naatak nahin hai?" he wonders, stirring his green tea vigorously.
What has provoked this soul searching angst? Salman Khan ko gussa kyon aata hai? The actor has been watching news anchors dissect the Saifai Mahotsav which saw Mulayam Singh and Akhilesh Yadav enjoy Bollywood glamour, even as riot victims froze in Muzzafarnagar. Salman was among those who made an appearance, in exchange of a rumoured fee of six crores.
"Whether I get paid Rs 6 crore, Rs 8 crore or Rs 12 crore, it's my hard earned money. I'm an actor who gets paid to entertain. Two lakh people watched me perform that evening," he glowers. "That money will be used to take care of the hospital bills of 250 kids and I bought equipment for a medical college in Aligarh. That's more than what the shawl wearing folk, standing outside their sarkari bungalows, pointing fingers at me, will do. I was at a college in Nagpur before I flew to Saifai. Did anyone bother about what I did there?"
His friend-turned-foe-turned-friend Shah Rukh Khan has taken up for him, saying it is "unfair to nitpick on Bollywood" as they are just doing their "job" as entertainers. Despite this show of unity, buzz is that when the two stars were in the same studio recently but avoided each other. "Shah Rukh is doing his job, I'm doing mine. If our eyes lock we will say 'Hi'. Our relationship can never be what it once was, not now when both of us are so busy," he reasons.
SRK may not be a 'good friend', but Aamir Khan and Hrithik Roshan are. Salman has lent them an ear when they hit a low in their personal lives. "Aamir is a great guy. Hrithik came to my farmhouse, we chilled out together, speaking about work... everything. They are mature grown-up men who know how to handle their relationships," he protests.
But the 48 year old admits that his chequered love-life is a smorgasbord of life lessons, many of them learnt the hard way. "If a person wants to go you cannot stop her from leaving. I've tried everything, from anger to emotional blackmail, from fights to tears, from possessiveness togyaanbaazi. If they'd liked me enough, they would not have moved on. But if they'd stayed on it and been unhappy it would've filled me with guilt," he admits.
And how does he feel when his exes find new love? "I'm happy for them because they are all amazing people. I still care for and respect them but I understand that I have no place in their lives anymore so I stay away. I don't want someone to be blamed because of the love we once shared," he says quietly.
