Bajrangi bhaijaan

Pawan Kumar Chaturvedi, a Capraesque naive and ardent devotee of Lord Hanuman, notices a speech-impaired six-year-old following him around. Unable to find out where the girl came from, he is obliged to bring her to the family he lives with as a guest in Delhi. When he gradually learns, to the shock of his staunch Hindu hosts, that the child is not just a meat-eating Muslim but a Pakistani citizen, Pawan decides to take her home personally, even if it means jeopardising his future.

Kabir Khan’s bighearted Bajrangi bhaijaan is an unabashedly sentimental and unrealistic comic thriller in the manner of old-timey Hindi-language cinema: spontaneous musical numbers, childlike humour, eye-popping sets, panoramic views of postcard-like landscapes and a spectacular, utopian ending on the snow-covered slopes of Kashmir that ties all the elements of the story together.

In a cheeky move, superstar Salman Khan is cast as a chaste Brahmin, the son of a Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh functionary to boot, who, in defiance of feuding governments carries a Muslim child on his shoulder across the border in emulation of Lord Hanuman. As a journalist in the film remarks, the media loves to sell hatred. In its thumping assertion of humanity beyond borders, Bajrangi bhaijaan confirms that no one sells love better than Bollywood.

– Srikanth Srinivasan