There was one particular aspect about the movie Bheja Fry that I found simultaneously heartening and realistic. The protagonist of the movie, Bharat Bhushan, is an incorrigible dimwit, a smug bore, a cuckold and yet, there is just one relationship that has remained intact despite all these personality disorders. The man has a "bestest friend" who completely shares the former's passion for watching cricket and empathises with his love for Bollywood music and his tendency to display his meagre singing abilities at the most inopportune times and places. I particularly enjoyed watching the chemistry between the two characters when they are completely tickled by each other's pitifully dull jokes even as they are trying to help another man who is in serious trouble.
I found this depiction refreshing because, for once, two men were shown to be thick buddies and there was no sacrificing of loves or lives by either of them to make the audience understand just how deep their friendship is. The said best friend is not just a lame sidekick to the protagonist whose only role is to make the male lead look good, as is the case in most of our fillums. On the contrary, Bharat Bhushan is full of praise and admiration for his friend's abilities as a tax officer while the friend does not really reciprocate any of this reverence.
The reason I am even writing about how two grown, uninteresting men are shown to be friends in a realistic manner in a movie is only because I think that very rarely do we get to see something like that. Bollywood, over the years, has slaughtered every kind of relationship between people and stuffed it up with its own fluff comprising of imaginary and in some cases, ghastly emotional upheavals and excessively complicated situations. The relationship between the male lead and his best friend has been vicitm to this kind of treatment very frequently. Given this context, I was surprised to see how the two friends in the movie are like some of the people I see and know. In everyday life, for a lot of people I know, to go out and help a friend in need while there is an important cricket match being aired on TV is the ultimate testament to one's concern for the friend's wellbeing . There have been other movies, such as Dil Chahta Hai that have succeeded in depicting warmth and bonhomie among male characters without leaving the audience cloyed by the end. But these are only the exceptions and not the norm. Well, at least it looks like there is some hope of watching men in movies discuss cricket or Bollywood and give each other imperfect advice and spend less time saving each other from getting electrocuted, drowning, being thrashed by 12 dark-skinned and bald men etc.,.
That leaves us with the question of the relationship among saheliyaan in movies- but let's not even get into that just yet!
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