Now, it is seeing the rise and rise of a new breed. Call them the Bhai-sexuals.

Unlike the Gucci-sporting, new-age DCH boys, the Bhai-sexuals are macho, retro and raw. And though, like the retrosexuals, they’d rather be sporting the newest gun rather than the latest designerwear, there’s one crucial difference that sets them apart.

The Bhai-sexual shares a chemistry with his best pal that often even overshadows his chemistry with his lady love.

In the recent kitschy romance Jaan-E-Mann, a lot of the plot is built around Salman Khan’s character Suhaan, who plays a rockstar, helping the geeky Agastya (Akshay Kumar) not just get cool, but also help get him the girl he himself loves. And if you recall, arguably the highpoint of Lage Raho Munnabhai was not the gently budding Vidya Balan-Sanjay Dutt romance, but the emotional scene where a contrite Munna approaches Circuit to apologise to him for losing his temper. Heart-wrenching drama follows when Munna reveals that the loyal Circuit, who has resorted to kidnapping chefs in the middle of the night to source hakka noodles, had also nursed Munna back to health, cradling him on his lap so that he does not miss his mother. As far as cinematic moments go, Balan’s pal pal... while holding onto Dutt’s pinkie pales in comparison.

Then there’s Rang De Basanti, which can claim to a more than a few of its own bhai-sexual moments — not only do Aamir Khan and his friends hang out shirtless in rough fields that set off their own rough and tough physiques, they also pick up the gun for each other and sacrifice their lives.

Not since Jai and Veeru, who — riding their scooter, singing Yeh dosti... — immortalised male friendship in Hindi cinema forever has Bollywood taken up male bonding with as much fervour.

These celluloid pals do not shy away from being emotionally intimate. It’s a trend that’s described as “bromance”, that is, friendship between brothers, or two heterosexual males or as a “male-ationship”. The metrosexuals typically bonded over hair gels and conduct their relationships with both their men pals and their women pals with equal new-age ease. On the other hand, there’s nothing easy about the retrosexual, like Shah Rukh Khan in Don — much like the angry young man of the Deewar and Zanjeer that he is moulded on, angst, fury and raging testosterone defines not just all his actions, but also his relationships.

The Bhai-sexual combines the two types and forms his own identity. He is, also, been hailed as a move away from the boy-girl romance, from Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge to Kuch Kuch Hota Hai, which has been a preoccupation with Bollywood over the last two decades.

“We’re finally moving away from the boy girl romances to explore and carve out newer themes and relationships in movies,” says box office analyst Komal Nahta. Culture watchers agree. “It’s an urban phenomenon. The changing times have brought in the culture of social cohesiveness.” Men are learning to enjoy each other’s company, something that comes easily to women. “Men have traditionally been taught how to compete with each other. Now, they are learning that they can simply have a good time,” says psychologist Jitender Nagpal. He attributes it to the breaking down of traditional masculine barriers.

Box office compulsions, Nahta says, may also play a part in this trend. “Budgets are sky rocketing, so it makes sense to hedge out the risk on more than one shoulder. Hence, it’s a move to have more than one hero and the recurring theme of male bonding,” adds Nahta.

Take the movie Golmaal, which had Ajay Devgan, Arshad Warsi and Sharman Joshi playing best friends. Rimi Sen had a blink-and-you-miss-her appearance in the movie. The gamble worked, and Golmaal was declared a moderate hit.

Amongst forthcoming movies which will use the bromance formula are David Dhawan’s Partner with Salman Khan and Govinda. Salman Khan plays a cool love guru who doles out advice to the innocent Govinda. David Dhawan has said that “The movie will concentrate on buddy talk and male bonding,” while Lara Dutta and Katrina Kaif provide the eye candy. Choreographer Ahmed Khan’s debut Fool and Final, with Sunny Deol, Suniel Shetty, Shahid Kapoor and Vivek Oberoi is a full-on male action comedy.

In many ways, the Bhai-sexual has always existed in Hindi films. While Sholay is a show-piece for the early Bhai-sexual, Yarana, Dostana and Amar Akbar Anthony are examples of films where full-bloodied heterosexuals who wouldn’t know a metrosexual from a train station, matching steps with one another, and thinking nothing of falling into hard embraces in moments of high drama.

Bollywood’s revisitation of this world is in many ways a nostalgic romanticisation of a time when friendships and loyalty transcended the labels — metrosexual, bi-sexual, retrosexual — that constrict behaviours and relationships today. “A lot of the films that we’ve loved and watched have had male friendship as the eternal theme. There’s something universally appealing about male bonding, one can connect with it very strongly,” says director Rohan Sippy, son of Ramesh Sippy who created Bollywood’s most famous friends, Jai and Veeru. “Everybody wants buddies like Jai and Veeru. Their relationship is playful, emotional, loyal and they’re ready to give up everything for each other,” adds Rohan. Both his movies Bluffmaster and Taxi 9-2-11 explore the friendships between Abhishek Bachchan and Riteish Deshmukh and Nana Patekar and John Abraham, respectively. For Rohan, the archetype of the friendship is classic, but the setting is modern. “The friendship is as unconditional as it was in the movies of the ’70s, but it is packaged for a modern audience,” he says.

For director Rakeysh Mehra, the line that best sums up the theme of friendship in his movie RDB is: “The scene between Aamir Khan and Sharman Joshi, when the shootout is happening, and Aamir tells Sharman, ‘Tu nikal ja kake, ab toh aar hai ya paar hai’, and Sharman says, ‘Tumhare bagair meri na aar hai na paar hai’. That for me is the essence of their friendship. It’s unconditional.” For the first half of the movie, where the relationship between the college dropouts unfolds, Mehra says that he played it by instinct. “It’s inspired by what we all go through in life and it’s absolutely unselfconscious.”

So, is new age celluloid friendship any different from the dosti of yesteryears? “Male friendship has been a valuable relationship in Bollywood, a relationship which has been valourised excessively,” points out film writer Rauf Ahmed.

In the early scenes of 1977’s Dharam Veer, Dharmendra and Jeetendra hold hands, look deep into each other’s eyes and swear undying friendship and love for each other. What may seem as homoerotic to a lot of people now, was simple and unadulterated male friendship then. More recently, Shah Rukh Khan and Saif Ali Khan play to the galleries as they hold hands in front of the homophobic Kantaben in Kal Ho Naa Ho.

The message, however, is as clear now as it was then: Our heroes are straight heterosexual males and Brokeback Mountain is not an inspiration for anybody yet. “Male bonding in our movies has to be taken at face value. There cannot be any homoerotic tinge to it. No Bollywood hero will ever risk his reputation by acting as a homosexual. Actors are very concerned about their reputation. The life span of an actor is too short for such risks,” points out Gadhvi.

However, social observers do point to one difference. Whether is it Sangam, Yaarana, Dostana, Qurbani and, of course, Sholay, sacrifice has been the ultimate test and enduring hallmark of the male friendship in Bollywood. According to anthropologist Shiv Vishwanathan: “In the films of the ’70s and ’80s, the friends were condemned to sacrifice. It was almost a duty relationship. You either had to die for each other or give up your love for your best friend.”

Not so, the new age friendship. The 21st century celluloid buddies know how to have a good time. They simply hang out and talk to each other, like the Dil Chahta Hai gang. “You can live for the new age friendship, you don’t have to die for it. The punitive aspect of friendship is gone from Hindi cinema. It is now celebratory and light-hearted without being over intense or sacrificial in nature,” adds Vishwanathan.

And so, even though Riteish is Abhishek’s best friend in 2005’s Bluffmaster, it does not stop him from pulling a fast one on his friend to teach him a lesson. Just like Akshay Kumar and John Abraham in Garam Masala, who may be great friends, will stop at nothing to win over the girls, even if it means trying to outdo each other.

Directors say that this has to do with changing times. When Sanjay Gadhvi, director of Dhoom, created the two friends Jai (Abhishek Bachchan) and Ali (Uday Chopra), the humour arose from the situation of putting the serious guy (Abhishek) and the funny guy (Uday) together, as they try to catch a thief and the contrast in their natures. Much like the contrast between Jai and Veeru of Sholay. In the upcoming movie Dhoom 2, he will further develop the relationship further. “In this installment, Ali is like part of the family, he hangs out at their house. Yes, the relationship has a light-hearted tinge, but if need be, Ali would gladly take a bullet for his friend. As filmmakers we realise that now, the public would probably cringe if we show that one friend is dying in the lap of his best friend. So, we have to package it differently, but the essence of friendship hasn’t changed.”