(MENAFN- Gulf Times) Salman Khan celebrated his birthday last week and it seems quite unimaginable that he is 50 years old. Nothing about him speaks of that age. He still has the temperament of a teenager.
Unlike the rest of the superstars in Bollywood he remains firmly a bachelor. He stays in the same room that he has been occupying for decades, living with his parents.
Bollywood heroes have a long shelf life but 50 is about the time when the downward graph begins; but in Salman's case it looks as if his career has just had the kind of momentum you see in the beginning of a superstar.
For instance, in the late 90s that was the case with Shah Rukh Khan when it was perceptible that everything he did was going to break some record.
But the difference is that Shah Rukh was in his 30s then while Salman has clocked half a century. Salman's iconic standing was evident at the party in his farmhouse which saw a couple of hundred of friends and family who make up the cream of Bollywood.
While media photographers were kept at arms length, some of the inside happenings could be ascertained by the images and tweets posted by the guests.
One such image showed his rumored Romanian girlfriend Lulia Vantur standing next to him along with a few other women and posing mischievously with tresses extended over the lips to make mock moustaches. But soon that photo was yanked off by the person who had put it up which means that Salman is still not ready to go public with the relationship if it exists.
Meanwhile he ran into an unusual issue recently. Salman has been trying hard to expand his charity Being Human. Under that brand name, products are also sold and they recently also decided to have an exclusive online store too.
The name of the website was called khanmarketonline.com
But Khan Market also happens to be one of the most famous markets of Delhi and an association of traders there are claiming that Salman is trying to capitalise on their brand.
They are saying that if their request to change the name of the online store is not heeded by Salman then they might even go to court.
The select one
While the race for the leading actress of Bollywood is said to be between Deepika Padukone and Katrina Kaif, one person who should get mention in this group but doesn't is Priyanka Chopra.
She has had as good a run as any of them in recent times and that too across all spectrums - from heroine oriented roles like Mary Kom to second lead characters like Kashibai in Bajirao Mastani.
While Deepika played the main character of Mastani, Priyanka's role came in for special praise by critics. Plus with her bagging the lead role in the American television show Quantico, she is actually a true blue crossover with a leg in both Hindi films and in Hollywood.
She is now set to appear in the sequel to the 2003 movie Gangaajal called Jai Gangaajal. While in the earlier movie Ajay Devgn assayed the role of a policeman caught in the vortex of Bihar's caste politics, the sequel has Priyanka in the main character of a tough policewoman.
She is also slated to be in the sequel of the Madhur Bhandarkar hit Fashion.
Not so sunny time
Rewind back to about 30 years ago, to a time when the three Khans are just beginning their careers in Bollywood and Sunny Deol was then one of the top stars.
Since then his career has fizzled and for a long time he had disappeared until a couple of family-produced movies in which the Deols acted together hit the screen in recent times.
Now Sunny is set to appear in Ghayal Once Again, the sequel of the erstwhile blockbuster Ghayal. He is directing it himself and the movie might again bring him back into the limelight both as actor and filmmaker.
But an incident brought home the fact that his standing as star is not as it used to be once upon a time. He had gone to promote the movie in the sets of the reality show Bigg Boss that is anchored by Salman Khan. The day the shooting for the show was to happen, Sunny tweeted a photo of him sitting along with Salman with the words: '"Big Boss.. Big Boss " get ready for a rockin Sunday'.
But news reports the next day revealed that Sunny had walked out without entering the set. He had come on time but for some reason the whole evening had passed by without the shooting beginning until he had lost his patience and decided that he didn't need to suffer such behaviour.
This would probably have not happened if Sunny was a reigning superstar because then of course the whole schedule would have rotated around him.
Double dose
For a man who is a storehouse of never-ending energy, it is odd to hear Shah Rukh Khan to even broach about the possibility of calling it a day sometime, even if as a joke.
Recently, during an interview in which he talked about a forthcoming movie called Fan, he was asked whether he would get awards for it and he said that he would retire after he got the National Awards.
Once given only to art-house movies, in recent times the National Awards have gone to a number of commercial movies but Shah Rukh has not gotten it yet.
In Fan, he plays a double role of a superstar and an obsessed fan who is 24 years old. For the latter, his look is 25 years younger than his actual age and they have actually managed to pull it off using prosthetics and, presumably, special effects.
Whether the movie itself does justice to such a character only time will tell and the National Award will depend on it. But don't expect Shah Rukh to retire after that.
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