While Bhaskar is a very different animal from Jacob, both men tear apart more clothes than they do prey. Every transformation calls for shredded garments and cracking bones. While Jacob can shapeshift on a whim (even when he’s airborne), Bhaskar needs a full moon to coax the animal out of him. At one point, his lunar ritual is compared to Karva Chauth, a fast which is only broken after seeing the full moon. His first transformation is shown in careful detail, with practically every body part being reconfigured on screen. Later, the process remains detailed, if less drawn out. In contrast, Jacob’s shift is all about swiftness, like the flipping of a thaumatrope — one moment he’s human, the next he’s a wolf.
In Bhediya, Bhaskar can sniff out a dead rabbit from miles away and listen in on conversations around town. His werewolf tears through the forest and shares a visceral relationship with the wilderness. Jacob has the same characteristics, but what sets the two apart is their body temperature. Jacob is around 108 °F of washboard abs and arms ripped enough to lift a dirt bike out of a truck. Bollywood’s bhediya isn’t “his own sun” (read: Bella Swan, New Moon, 2009), but he is more than capable of hoisting beds and friends with his brute strength.
It’s challenging to assign a winner in this supernatural contest. One might be the better werewolf, but the other emerges a better man. Jacob might fit into and even determine, in ways, who the quintessential werewolf is, but he’s also the man who ‘imprints’ on a newborn. Sadly, grooming can have more meanings than one even in a werewolf movie. Bhaskar might be a scaredy cat of a wolf, but the man he becomes is humbler, more empathetic, and considerably less greedy (now that the forest is his home, of course, he’d want to build a road around it than through it.) If the former’s wolf and the latter’s human could make one individual, maybe we wouldn’t have to choose.