Bollywood Khans: Ruling the Waves at 60

ASN'T it just yesterday that a bunch of us hired a VCR (video cassette recorder, for those born after its demise) during summer vacations to organise a watch-party for the tragic-romantic musical Qayamat Se Qayamat Tak (1988)? Its boy-next-door lead found a way to our youthful hearts by strumming the guitar and singing 'Papa kehte hain bada naam karega'. This March 14, I found myself wishing him good health and happiness on his 60th birthday while ruminating on how far we—an entire generation of artistes, viewers and scribes—have come.

- NAMRATA JOSHI

Along with Aamir Khan, the other two members of Bollywood Khandom—Shahrukh and Salman, who also endeared themselves to the audience around the same time, one with Fauji (1989), a charming TV series on young army commandoes, and the other with the wholesome family blockbuster Maine Pyar Kiya (1989)—will also be celebrating their 60th birthdays this year, on November 2 and December 27, respectively. But the milepost appears to be more of an arrival into the next fecund phase of life.

Along with Big B, the Khans continue to be the last great superstars of Hindi cinema, their popularity sustaining and growing now for more than 35 years. What's more, it has been a shared reign, one in which they have created their own distinct niches, more in complement than competition. If Salman has been speaking to the masses, Aamir has catered to the middle class and its expectations of "issue-based, quality commercial cinema". If SRK opened the floodgates of NRI nostalgia to consolidate an overseas box office territory for Bollywood, Aamir took India close to the Oscars with Lagaan and later, with