If the ability to publicly laugh at one’s own failure shows willingness to refresh oneself, then Aamir Khan is on the way to reviving himself after being punched hard by Thugs Of Hindostan and Laal Singh Chaddha.

Of the top three Khans, it’s Aamir who has rarely shown wit in his interviews or interactions — most times, his jokes haven’t landed well. His pranks used to be so unfunny that Juhi Chawla had at one time stopped talking to him during the shooting of Ishq. Aamir had also once written a blog where he mentioned a dog called Shah Rukh who licked his feet while he fed him biscuits. Falling more into the realm of offensive than humour, Aamir had to explain the “joke” to wriggle out of the ensuing outrage.

On the other hand, Shah Rukh and Salman are known to be spontaneous with their wit. When Salman shook hands with me after he got off the stage at the trailer launch of his Eid release Kisi Ka Bhai Kisi Ki Jaan last week, I realised that in addition to a bad throat infection, he was running a fever too. But on stage he hadn’t revealed just how lousy he was feeling as he kept the entertainment going almost single-handedly for 40 minutes. On the flip side, it was also proof that once again, it’s a Salman show right from writing the lyrics and choosing the songs to scripting and editing his new film. Director Farhad Samji is only a name in the credits.

Shah Rukh is an entertainer who can think on his feet. In fact, when Jimmy Kimmel, the underwhelming host of this year’s Oscars, weakly repeated last year’s Will Smith episode four to five times to raise a laugh, one felt that SRK and Karan Johar would make better hosts than America’s chat show celebrities.

But a delightfully funny Aamir Khan sprang a surprise in the Dream 11 ads being aired during this year’s IPL matches. Featuring him with his 3 Idiots’ costars R. Madhavan and Sharman Joshi, and cricketers like Rohit Sharma, Hardik Pandya and R. Ashwin, Aamir’s sportsmanship has already come in for much media praise for letting Jasprit Bumrah bowl one to him on the failure of Laal Singh Chaddha. There’s another ad that takes a jibe at how Aamir doesn’t attend awards functions.

Aamir and humour? It’s such a pleasant departure from the man who’d desperately sought to influence the audience through pliant voices who blamed a boycott call for the poor performance of his film, and was thrilled when colleagues like Hrithik Roshan sang paeans to Laal Singh Chaddha. There was a collective belief in all the actors that they must stand together when the Hindi film industry was going through an almost existential crisis. Fortunately, acceptance that they need to relook at their content, and accept feedback from outside their echo chambers, is finally dawning on Aamir and company.

Of course, the credit for Aamir’s wit in the ads must go to director Nitesh Tiwari in whom the actor has implicit faith — Aamir and Nitesh had made a triumphant Dangal in 2016. Nitesh is one of those rare and quiet directors who knows how to blend entertainment with substance. Three years after Dangal, Nitesh had come up with Chhichhore, Sushant Singh Rajput’s last big hit before his tragic end six months later.

But the joke really is on the media. An exceptionally lazy bunch that doesn’t crosscheck its stories, had jumped the gun and begun to write “scoops” on how Rajkumar Hirani was quietly planning a sequel to 3 Idiots when all along the trio of actors was only doing an ad campaign.

Some campaigns are smartly orchestrated. One took into confidence photographers with huge social media following and had them carry Insta reels of a furious Ranbir breaking a fan’s mobile. Not catching on that it was the first part of an ad (the actor would later be shown gifting a new phone to the fan), trolls had slammed Ranbir for his arrogance.

It was clever because it also fed off an undisguised fact about Ranbir — he’s always had a peeve with the paparazzi.

Bharathi S.Pradhan is a senior journalist and author