Salman Khan, Then & Now!
It’s nearly 12 in the night and there isn’t an iota of sleep in him. He narrows his eye, flashes his dimple, tilts his head to the left, and raises his hands over his head to swing to the song. His Appa, for the nth time that night sings “Pandeyji Seeti” from Dabangg 2.
Cut to a flashback
A newly pregnant woman waits for her turn at the GP. Next door is a pediatrician with a long queue of parents waiting with their impatient kids. The pregnant woman sits next to a couple with two boys, almost of identical ages that one would mistake them to be twins.
“Are they twins?” the pregnant woman asks the mother brightly.
“Oh no! They aren’t! They were born 15 months apart…,” she says trying to restrain one of the boys from getting of the chair.
The boy however has his way. He jumps of and says with a flourish, “Bhedi Singh, hum tumme itne ched karenge ki…”
All of 4, this was the younger of the two. While the older stayed close to his mother and eyed his sibling curiously, the object of our attention went into a shadow fight with an imaginary ‘Bhedi Singh’!
The boy lisped more threats to the villain, crossed his eyebrows, fisted and boxed his invisible adversary who seemed to keep up the fight. Some kicks followed after which I figured that the villain was rolling in the ground. Our little hero picked him up and pushed him to the wall. And then in an incredulous piece of action sequence, the little fearless man ran towards the wall and thrust his shoulder at it.
The pregnant woman watched this spectacle with her eyes wide open. Disbelieving shocked and amused she didn’t know what to make of what she saw before her.
She turned to the mother again, “He seems to be a big Dabangg fan?”
“It’s Salman Khan that he is besotted with! And there’s nothing we can do about it. This one (pointing to the older one, who suddenly started brushing against his mother) is the quieter one. He gives me no trouble. But this one, I tell you, is a terror!!”
“Bhedi Singh, hum tumme itne ched karenge ki…” the hero turned his attention to his brother who he saw was taking advantage of his little fight with the villain.
“Tumhara naam kya hai? Aur tum kisse ladai kar rahe the?” asked the pregnant woman pinching his cheek.
“Robin Hood Pandey naam hai humara. Aur woh Bhedi Singh tha!” came the snappy reply.
“Chedi Singh, buddhu Pandeyji! Bhedi Singh nahin!” quipped the older one, with a quirky smile on his lips.
The pregnant woman let out a small giggle.
The young man obviously didn’t like it. He punched his brother and the older one, going against his mother’s description jumped off the chair to get into the fight.
The parents by now had to step in to separate the two. Peace prevailed.
At this moment, the pregnant woman touched her belly and said to herself, “What kind of kid will I have? Damn, I’ll keep him away from cinema!”
Cut to Present
In what has (alarmingly) become a daily ritual, V insists on watching songs that have a certain Mr Khan in them. He has also learnt to hold his head and pretend that he is flexing his muscles (like Salman in the title track of the film ‘Bodyguard’).
And did I tell you, that off late he insists on taking off his sweater, shirt, pants and his diaper… winter is still around and the man likes to be bare-bodied. I can’t even imagine myself to think that this is a fall out of watching Salman Khan!
The TV junkie is back into the idiot box. Besides pretending to be a superwoman between work and family, Rituparna also dreams of flying free as an entrepreneur! Her son’s student, she is learning the ropes of parenting every day. Rituparna blogs at http://onboardthemommyship.