Why we are so afraid of Salman Khan abandoning Twitter

Ek toh vaise bhi kum tweet karta hoon, nahi karne pe majboor mat karo (sic)

-Salman Khan; June 10, 2015.

Once upon a not-so-long-ago, a "hi" from Salman Khan had received more than 5,000 retweets in five minutes, and several more favourites. We lesser mortals, who follow Salman on Twitter, are aware of his tweeting pattern. When there's no film round the corner, "Bhai" wakes up once in a blue moon (give or take a few days) and treats us to his pearls of wisdom. Which range from a "hi" to "kaise ho" to "hehehehe sorry". But that was till a few months ago.

Over the last couple of months, there's been a noticeable change in the way he tweets, though. For one, there was that holy-to-Salmaniacs night when Salman went on a tweeting spree, decrying, in tweet after Hinglish-ed tweet, the practice of tweeting. People expected him to stop his sermons, only to be met with more gyaan. And having criticised tweeting in scathing tweets, Salman disappeared from the social networking platform. The hiatus was short. Much to the ecstasy of Bhai's fans, Khan got back in a few days. Ever since, he's been seen on the site off and on. At times, his tweets make sense; at others, people are forced to draw analogies between the logic (or the lack of it) in his tweets and his films.

Once in a while, Salman goes on a eulogising spree too. Remember when "Dabangg" Khan asked his followers, "Agar kisi ko follow karna hai? Bahar ka... inko follow karo @TheSlyStallone Aapke Hero ka hero Sylvester Stallone (sic)"? The tweet was single-handedly responsible for a meteoric rise in the number of Stallone followers (well, Rocky has only about one million followers, as compared to our Bhai's 13 million). And like that wasn't enough, Salman fans were beside themselves with joy when Stallone thanked Bhai on Twitter. Okay, now one would've expected Salman to spare some words after Stallone offered him a Hollywood film, but no. Days and nights of expectation were met with stone-cold silence from Salman. And finally, when all the excitement had subsided, Salman responded to "Sly", after half a month.

Then there was the best of Bolly bondings on Twitter. So, when Shah Rukh Khan revealed the first look of Salman's Bajrangi Bhaijaan, the latter thanked him profusely. Well, Aamir Khan tweeted the first look too, and he's a friend Salman has never shied away from singing paeans to. Shah Rukh saying he believed "being a brother is bigger than being a hero" left many Salman and Shah Rukh fans in tears that day. For some, the tweets were of exhilaration; for others, of sorrow. And the guy "with a big heart" that Salman is, a gesture of friendship from Shah Rukh wouldn't go unreturned. Therefore, right after SRK revealed the first look of his Raees on Twitter, Salman went on yet another promotion trip. Over a series of monosyllabic tweets, Salman made a point: "Raees aa raha hai". To which, Shah Rukh's response was asking Salman to send some biryani for his children in Bulgaria. In Bollywood, there's absolutely nothing that Khan't happen, after all.

At present, Salman is under fire from many sections of the society for his tweets on Yakub Memon. The actor posted a series of tweets on July 26, which made people accuse him of "questioning the judgment of the Supreme Court". Yakub, a death row convict, is scheduled to be hanged on July 30, 2015. And while the case has raked up the capital punishment versus mercy debate again in the country, Yakub found a voice of support in Salman. Yakub is convicted in the 1993 Mumbai blasts case, and is the brother of Tiger Memon, the mastermind of the blasts. Several tweets from Salman last afternoon read like he was "supporting" Yakub, calling him "innocent", and sharply criticising Tiger Memon. And, inevitably, there was an eruption of Salman-tinted tweets. While some stood by his right to disagree with the death sentence to Yakub, a lot of others went all acidic in speaking out against Salman.

Later, after Salman's father Salim Khan told the media that his son's tweets were "meaningless", and that he didn't support Salman, Khan Jr posted another series of tweets. Here, he said that he "would like to apologise unconditionally". Salman also mentioned that his father had called him and asked him to "retract his tweets", lest they caused any misunderstanding. And indeed, all his Tiger-bashing tweets had been deleted by the evening.

Now, anybody who's familiar with the way Salman tweets would realise in a jiffy that such neat and clean tweets aren't really the by-products of the REAL Salman Khan's mind. His tweets - at their grammatically sound-est - are something along the lines of "hehehe sorry". Seeing words like "I here by (okay, there's an extra space between "here" and "by", but this is still sanitised) retract them" did leave many of us a tad more wise. This was someone else tweeting on behalf of Salman, and not the actor himself. Maybe Daddy Dearest employed someone to cauterise Sallu's tweets, too. You never know.

As for his presence on Twitter from now on, several theories abound. Salman might either get off the platform altogether, or reduce his visits, or end up sticking to just film-promotional jazz on Twitter. All of which are heartbreaking. After all, who else commands as much fan love on Twitter as Salman? Who else can cause a Twitter-quake with just a "hi"? Yakub hanged or not, Bhai needs to be himself on Twitter. How else will we spend those solitary nights when his sermons keep us company!