What’s missing in the trailer of Bharat that gets released this afternoon is the presence of that dusky and arresting actress Tabu. Otherwise, it’s a kick-ass Salman Khan show all the way. And like a flashback of life with the memories starting out in glorious colour and then going back to stark black-and-white, the trailer unfolds on the actor’s many avatars in this Eid release.

It starts off showing Salman as a middle-class old man. Well, elderly. If the year is 2010 and he was already a kid at the time of Partition. Grizzled and slow now, with a salt and pepper look, but his wit very much in place, Salman says, “People who see an old man don’t realize that my life was more colourful than all the white in my hair and beard.” True, because he kicks off a bike and then showcases his skills as a stunt man in the circus where he plays hopscotch between the bike and cars in the Well of Death.

There’s sexy Disha Patani as a trapeze artiste trying to match steps with Salman in the song Slow Motion and there’s the lovely Katrina Kaif sitting behind a desk in an employment bureau who later turns out to be Salman’s “Madam Sir” and is seen dancing with him on narrow cobbled pathways in Malta and sand dunes of Abu Dhabi. She also sends him to work in an oil field (or is it a coal mine?) where there’s an explosion and death that reminds Salman of the pain of Partition.

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The scenes move quickly. Writer and director Ali Abbas Zafar, who reportedly made Bharat based on the South Korean film Ode to My Father, teases Salman fans with glimpses of the actor playing different characters over the decades of India’s historic moments. There’s Partition and the death of Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru somewhere early on and then Salman is a Navy officer (Merchant Navy or the Indian Navy, it’s a bit confusing) whose ship rides a storm while he takes on what appears to be Somali pirates on the high seas.

Watch the trailer of Bharat:

It’s all very exciting. And Salman, who is joined in almost every frame by the comedian Sunil Grover, talks of his life being perfect because he had everything, love, friends and family. And then there is pain, you see it in his eyes, in the voice of his father (played by Jackie Shroff), and Salman saying there’s pain behind every smiling face and that is what’s kept him alive. The trailer is like an intriguing jigsaw puzzle but the pieces don’t fall in place yet. For the complete picture, you will have to wait for Bharat’s release. It’s coming during Eid. And until then, Ali Abbas Zafar and Salman Khan will continue pushing out pieces of this puzzle to keep you hooked.