Published On : Mon, May 11th, 2015

Nagpur Salman fan Balram celebrates Bhai’s bail by ‘Swachta Abhiyan’

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Nagpur: While Salman Khan’s fans all over India were celebrating his bail instead of jail by distributing sweets and dancing on the roads, this die hard fan in Nagpur had other ideas. On 8th May he exhorted all other Bhai fans to come out on the streets of Nagpur to sweep them clean wearing ‘Being Human’ T shirts.

There is no report about how many turned up, but this guy took up the jhadu for sure.

Balram Gehani, who does his utmost to look like Salman too, amazes in other ways. When Karan Johar asked Salman that famous question in Coffee with Karan about his affairs and Salman replied with a dead pan face that he was still a virgin all of India sniggered but not Balram.

Before

Before

No Balram Gehani definitely didn’t. In Being Bhaijaan, a fascinating documentary directed by Shabani Hassanwalia and Samreen Farooqui, this Salman Khan fan from Nagpur reveals that he liked the word “virgin” very much because Khan accepted that’s what he was. As proof, Gehani said: Khan has never done a kissing scene. And Gehani added, “I am 100 per cent virgin and will remain one.”

What’s more Gehani thinks Salman does the nation a favour by remaining a ‘virgin’. He believes India’s population is under control because Bhai fans haven’t married. “That’s because Bhai himself hasn’t married. If Bhai gets married, at least 3-4 crore men will get married. A year later, they will have children. The earth will topple over and the world will end. He is like Vishnu’s avatar, who is balancing the whole world on his finger.”

After

After

Gehani is exaggerating, but not much. Khan has been more or less god so far. He was god to the industry, balancing the box office on his finger, summoning up blockbusters out of thin air, thinner material. And he is certainly god to fans like Gehani and Shan Ghosh, who answers his phone with a ‘Jai Salman’.

For his fans the hero of the masala movie is a direct descendent from our epics, an embodiment of good, a vanquisher of evil. And Khan created his screen persona with a bit of mix-and-match: respectful to elders like Rama, mischievous and flirty like Krishna, and, off-screen, unattached like Hanuman. (It’s no accident that Khan’s next release is titled Bajrangi Bhaijaan.) Many fans buy this persona totally. At least fans from the India that mainstream Bollywood is trying very hard to forget.

These fans are ordinary people. Gehani is working to reopen his father’s bakery. Bhaskar Hedaoo wants to earn enough for his sister’s marriage. Shan Ghosh, a Bhai lookalike who is called ‘Junior Salman’, is investing in real estate to move his family from middle class to upper class. But these real-life aspirations still come second to dreams of being Bhaijaan.

Many aspirations of fans like these have been captured in Being Bhaijan.