When Salman Khan begged for a role in Lai Bhari

Riteish Deshmukh's Bollywood star power seems to have worked wonders for his Marathi movie Lai Bhari which stormed the weekend box-office raking in as much as10 crore. While Lai Bhari had Riteish's backing, what kept audience interested was also the debut of Bollywood's bhai Salman Khan into the Marathi industry. Salman's five minute cameo was greeted with wolf whistles from the audience as is the norm. At Lai Bhari's success conference yesterday, Riteish narrated an interesting anecdote of how he ended up casting Salman for this movie. "We were shooting at Ramoji film city for Lai Bhari. Salman too was present there shooting for Jai Ho. When we ran into each other one day, Salman asked in his own style, 'Hey bro, what's up. What's happening.' When I told him that I was shooting for my Marathi movie, Lai Bhari, Salman asked, 'Mujhe ek scene milega kya.' Now we had finished shooting more than half of the film and I was wondering how we could accommodate Salman and discussed it with Nishikant (Nishikant Kamat, director)," revealed Riteish. While Riteish, at first didn't think much about Salman's request, over the next few days he understood the superstar's serious intent to act in Lai Bhari. "The next day, I met Salman in the gym and he asked me, 'What happened to my scene that I discussed with you?' I said, 'Yes, we are working on it.' The next day, I met him in the gym again and he asked me the same question. So the third day, I skipped the gym. Finally, on the fourth day, we scripted this scene for Salman and he shot for it," said Riteish. And staying true to his real life persona, Salman turned love guru and preferred to advice Riteish on the complicated matters of his heart in the movie. Interestingly, Riteish revealed yesterday that a majority of Salman's dialogues and his scenes on the emotion 'love' were inspired from Salman's own personal life. So impressed was Salman with the movie and his own small act that he asked Riteish if he could get one more scene in the movie which made Riteish jokingly tease Salman, "This is my debut Marathi movie and not yours." Riteish, on his part, expressed his deep gratitude to Salman for having agreed to act in such a small role in the film. Said Riteish, "He is our country's superstar and I am grateful that he acted in my debut movie. A big thank you to you, Salman bhau." Well, wonder if Salman would like to star in a full-fledged Marathi movie now.