You could applaud him for his versatility. From playing a rustic hero who takes on the Brits at their own game (Lagaan) and a sensitive school teacher who handles a dyslexic child so tenderly that he blossoms (Taare Zameen Par), to becoming a physically powerful punch machine (Ghajini), Aamir Khan’s flair for way-out parts cannot be questioned.

You can pat him on the back for his sincerity — getting that painfully structured Ghajini body was no picnic. And to turn his pint-sized frame into a fearsome, animal-like monster on a revenge spree called for bucketsful of sweat and toil.

You can certainly laud his confidence. To do a film where the title role belongs to a villain (and Pradeep Rawat is not even a well-known, top-rung one) does need an actor who looks at the film in its entirety and not a superstar whose ego would overtake everything else.

You could even praise his business sense for turning an essentially sub-standard South Indian potboiler into a much-awaited, Rs 90 crore X’mas release. The highly-priced, solo-hero Ghajini brought in tonnes of moolah from the advance counters itself. His marketing skills, his tenacity in projecting his starrer as enticingly irresistible, must-see fare, have little competition.

Undoubtedly, out of all the top-ranking heroes of the day, Aamir Khan is the most cinema-savvy of them all. He can poke holes all over a script till it looks like a colander and he can combine pleasurable ‘watchability’ with sensibility and saleability.

Which is why, even if Ghajini does big time business, it will never make it as my favourite Aamir Khan film. And tradewallahs who go into orgasmic overdrive to ensure that they are invited to the actor’s next sneak preview, may please him by calling it Aamir Khan’s career-best performance. But, as far as I’m concerned, Ghajini will remain a mediocre film in the actor’s résumé. Give me the sensitive Aamir Khan who gave a child star centrestage and came in only at interval point, same time, last year, in his debut as a director (Taare Zameen Par) any day over the snarling, revenge-seeking Sanjay Singhania of this week’s blood-and-gore release.

Aamir Khan may write to me that I’ve been unkind to him after QSQT, but, honestly, how can anyone who admires the actor’s fine film-making skills break into applause over an unrelentingly violent film released in the gentle season of gifts, mistletoe and forgiveness? Lagaan and Taare... are the films I’d like to remember Aamir for and not the brain-badgering kind of cinema that Ghajini is.

Coming up to suit the season and to soothe the jangled nerves of a terror-struck metropolis is the real-life romance of the story writer of Jodhaa Akbar. You wouldn’t recognise the man’s name but Haider Ali is the guy who mooted the story of Akbar’s romance with a Hindu princess and sold it to Ashutosh Gowariker. Haider Ali was seen in landmark serials like Saeed Mirza’s Nukkad and was in Jodhaa Akbar as the actor on whom A.R. Rehman’s top-class Sufi number, Khwaja mere khwaja, was picturised.

The secular credentials of Jodhaa Akbar, 2008’s first major release, centred on a Muslim king’s love story with a Hindu wife who continued practising her faith and had her own temple in his palace. When the emperor visited her chamber, she’d apply tilak on his forehead and he’d turn vegetarian once a week for her.

That was on celluloid. But Haider Ali, the man who penned the Jodhaa Akbar story, has a similar story to tell in his personal life. The son of a Jewish actress and a Muslim superstar, Haider gave up studies because his friends had passed out of school and he was still in the 7th. But Ali fell in love with and married a pure Tamil Brahmin girl called Uma Sankari Natarajan who went on to become a paediatrician of repute in Mumbai. The 7th standard dropout’s wife is Dr Uma Sankari Ali, currently head of the medical department at Wadia Hospital!

There was no conversion in this marriage and, astonishingly, Ali turned vegetarian for the rest of his life.

Haider Ali and Dr Uma Sankari have been happily married for the last 30 years and they have two grown-up daughters. That’s the kind of story balm we need to wind up a difficult year.

Bharathi S. Pradhan is managing editor, Movie Mag International