Salman Khan felt like ‘a monkey in a zoo’, understood that he’s a nobody without fans: Chetan Bhagat recalls visiting Galaxy Apartments | Bollywood News

Author Chetan Bhagat recalled paying a visit to actor Salman Khan‘s famous Mumbai residence, at the Galaxy Apartments in Bandstand. He said that it really felt like he was entering a different galaxy, and said that Salman took an immediate liking to him. This was back when Chetan was still working at a bank, and had sold the rights to his book One Night @ the Call Centre to Salman. It was adapted into a film titled Hello, directed Atul Agnihotri. He later collaborated with Salman on the film Kick, which he co-wrote.
In an interview with The Lallantop, Chetan said that Salman has some sort of ‘sixth sense’, where he can gauge whether he likes someone or not. Moments after meeting Chetan, Salman invited him to work out together. “I told him I’m just a writer, and that I have to go back to my day job at the bank, but he wasn’t having it. He said, ‘Stay back, you’re working on my next movie as well’.”
Also read – Chetan Bhagat recalls meeting Shah Rukh Khan on the sets of Om Shanti Om: ‘He picked up a chair for my mother’
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He said that he only had a ‘limited interaction’ with Salman during Hello, but that they really collaborated while making Kick. “I would visit the sets quite a bit, I would talk to him quite a bit. He is who he is. He doesn’t put on a cloak. While promoting Hello, I had done an interview with him, and I’d asked him how it feels to have crowds everywhere he goes, desperate for photographs with him. He said, ‘Mujhe aisa lagta hai jaise chidiyaghar mein bandar hota hai (I feel like a monkey in a zoo), but I know that I’m nothing without fans’. I’ve never forgotten this line. It happens to me on a much smaller scale, but when I’m irritated at the airport, I remember Salman’s line, ‘Jis din yeh chala gaya sab chala gaya‘.”
Several of Chetan’s films have been adapted into successful films, such as 2 States, 3 Idiots, and Kai Po Che!. Salman, on the other hand, was recently seen in the action film Sikandar. Directed AR Murugadoss, the movie opened to poor reviews and mixed audience response on Sunday. It has so far made only around Rs 55 crore domestically in two days. On the occasion of Eid on Monday, Salman made a traditional appearance before his fans, proving that he still enjoys immense popularity.