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.

... contd.