Bajrangi Bhaijaan is Sham Kaushal's first film with Salman Khan but back in 1988, when the action director was still a stuntman and the actor had yet to chalk up a release, they had practised together. Kaushal didn't think Salman remembered this after 27 years but on the first day of shoot, he not only recognised and hugged Kaushal, but enquired after each stuntman by name as he recalled the good old days. “By the end of the day I was Salman's biggest fan,“ beams Kaushal.

Having worked with Kabir Khan earlier, he knew this wasn't one of those larger-than-life films despite the presence of Salman. The action sequences would have to be designed according to scripted situations, the director's sensibilities and character requirements.

“Salman's character, Pavan, is a simple, honest do-gooder from a family of pahalwans. To make the film believable and real, the action had to look spontaneous, like a bull charging in,“ he says.

In one of the first action sequences, Salman comes to the Pakistani embassy in Delhi with the little lost girl for a visa and a riot breaks out. “Some people were trying to climb the gate of a school passing for the embassy while others were throwing stones. Cops were trying to disperse the mob with water and lathis. Crowds of junior artistes and fighters, 50 of them flown in from Mumbai, were prepped for the two-day sequence but there was still the danger of something going wrong. By God's grace, everything went off smoothly,“ he says, relieved. However, the maara maari left child actor Harshaali Malhotra, who plays Munni, shaken. After that whenever she spotted Kaushal, she would go running to her mummy, afraid he'd make her do another action scene. “I had to bribe her with chocolates and sweet talk,“ he smiles. “There were times when we even delayed the shoot because you can't force a reluctant child. Luckily, Kabir, who has a six-year-old daughter himself, knew how to coax her to face the camera. And when she did, she was magic. So cute and talented,“ he raves.

From Delhi they moved to Rajasthan's sand dunes. “It's not easy moving around with paraphernalia in the desert and filming in the flickering light. You're always worried about someone slipping and falling,“ Kaushal says.

The terrain got harder in Kashmir. Pahalgam where they started, had not been swept by the flash floods, but the rain and snow made the job difficult. The climax, shot at the base of the Thajiwas glacier outside Sonmarg, 10,000 feet above sea level, was a challenge as was another turning point in the story canned in Kashmir. “Even with a green screen and visual effects used to enhance the danger, we had to take some really risky live shots in the Valley but we pulled it off,“ he exults. “Bajrangi Bhaijaan will not glorify Salman's machismo but it will bring out the human side that makes him a hero to a six year old.“