In the 1960s, the filmmakers decided to whisk the audience off to exotic locations in India and abroad, with colour technology brightening up the mood even more. Often referred to as the ‘escapist decade’, the stock film of the 1960s was the light-hearted musical romance, with the occasional suspense thriller also hitting the silver screen. Bollywood of the 1970s was the most glamourous decade till then. The policemen-heroes snatched personal time off from chasing smugglers and drug dealers to serenade their women while the gangster-heroes got introduced to gorgeous young strangers while ducking bullets and evading the police. It was romance propelled by furious action and piquant music. The 1980s was a very mixed bag — the slush of crass crudity ran alongside the middle-of-the-road romantic stream. Javed Akhtar said of the 1980s, “All directors, composers and writers who had class got marginalised. Sophistication and class, these were not good days for them. Crude and lower aesthetics came to the forefront.”

Starting in the latter half of the 1980s, a visible change in love stories was that poverty was fast receding into the background. Ijaazat (1987), Maine Pyar Kiya (1989), Chandni (1989), Qayamat Se Qayamat Tak (1988) all had reasonably well-to-do families in their backdrops. True, there were economic divides. But penniless men like Noshu in Footpath (1953) or Raj in Anari (1959) weren’t present anymore. When the 1990s began, information technology, economic liberalisation, and devaluation of the rupee was India’s announcement to the world that it now meant business. Software was India’s new soft power. Two decades ago, the attribute of a good man was his austerity. But for this fast-track generation employed in IT and foreign banks, owning a new car by the age of 26, overseas jobs postings, and vacations in Disneyland figured in their bucket lists. Wealth was health, and they celebrated it. This was the profile of the NRI segment that Bollywood smartly targeted in the 1990s. Thus, we see either an overseas backdrop or an NRI lead character in films like Lamhe (1991), Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge (DDLJ) (1995), Pardes (1997), Kuch Kuch Hota Hai (1998), Aa Ab Laut Chalen (1999), and Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam (1999). At the same time, ties to one’s family and Indian roots were emphasised upon, the most famous example being how Simran in DDLJ fights with her father to let her marry Raj, but does not elope. And Pardes was all about not losing one’s Indianness.

The decade of the 1990s was ‘poverty eradication’ time in Bollywood — audiences were wowed and delighted with destination weddings and palatial houses in exotic locations. Witness Raj and Simran in DDLJ gallivanting across Europe, or Prem and Nisha in Hum Aapke Hain Koun (1994) playing catch-me-if-you-can inside massive ballrooms and stadium-sized lawns of the estate. Also, in India of the 1990s, the call centres, the paging and cellular phone industry, software development companies and training institutes, and the computer hardware industry started providing ample employment opportunities to the urban and semi-urban middle-class. And therefore, even in Bollywood films that were about the middle class, there was no abject poverty on display.
While romance has always been Bollywood’s safest bet, the returns on investment in love stories in the 1990s were expected to be higher than ever before, thanks to this fast-growing diaspora. Passionate romance was okay, but not the ‘dead’ serious one, pun intended. And thus, the formula of the 1990s defined itself — romance of the rich, intense but not tragic.

The success of fluffy street romances like Dil Hai ke Manta Nahin (1991), Raja Hindustani (1996), Pyar To Hona Hi Tha (1998), and romcoms and love-after-quarrel stories like Dil (1990), 1942 - A Love Story (1994), Andaz Apna Apna (1994), Ishq (1997), Hum Hain Rahi Pyar ke (1993), Yes Boss (1997) proved that this formula worked. True, while there were the films tinted with shades of jealousy, misunderstandings, and painful sacrifices — Beta (1992), Saajan (1991), Rangeela (1995), Dil To Pagal Hai (1997), Deewana (1992), Aashiqui (1990), Akele Hum Akele Tum (1995), and Taal (1999) — what cannot be denied is that romance at the core was a winning horse. And there came two extreme varieties of love. One was the obsessed, violent lover of Darr (1993) and Anjaam (1994) played by Shah Rukh Khan, who scared the women out of their wits. The other was the comic-hero Govinda, who made light of all the problems on earth with his brand of uproarious comedies — Raja Babu (1994), Coolie No. 1 (1995), Hero No. 1 (1997), Aunty No. 1 (1998), Haseena Maan Jayegi (1999), Dulhe Raja (1998), most of which featured Karisma Kapoor as his love interest and were made in collaboration with filmmaker David Dhawan. After Kishore Kumar in the 1950s and 1960s, Govinda was Bollywood’s first out-and-out comic hero.

The debutants of the 1980s — Sanjay Dutt, Juhi Chawla, Aamir Khan, Madhuri Dixit, Salman Khan, and Govinda — matured into romantic leads of the 1990s. The debutants of the 1990s — Ajay Devgn, Rahul Roy, Ayesha Jhulka, Karisma Kapoor, Aishwarya Rai, Shilpa Shetty, and Kajol — also showed great promise. Many filmmakers hit a high note in this decade — Mahesh Bhatt, Sanjay Leela Bhansali, Subhash Ghai, Ram Gopal Verma, David Dhawan, Mansoor Khan, the Barjatyas, Dharmesh Darshan, Karan Johar, Indra Kumar, and the house of Yash Raj. While no comparison can be made to the music of 1950s–1970s, the 90s saw Nadeem-Shravan, Jatin-Lalit, Anand-Milind, along with veteran violinist Uttam Singh compose good melodies. A.R. Rahman splashed into the arena with Rangeela, Lata Mangeshkar and Asha Bhosle entered their sixth decade of playback singing, and Kumar Sanu, Udit Narayan, Sonu Nigam, Kavita Krishnamurthy, Alka Yagnik, Anuradha Paudwal became the leading voices behind the screen. So, all in all, it was a confident entry into the new millennium.

The beginning of the new millennium was like an extension of the 1990s. Three star kids debuted in the year 2000 with love stories. Hrithik Roshan’s chemistry with Amisha Patel sizzled in Kaho Naa… Pyar Hai (2000), while Abhishek Bachchan and Kareena Kapoor had a more sedate beginning in Refugee (2000). Two more films from Yash Raj along the lines of DDLJ came soon after — Mohabbatein (2007) with three pairs of lovers up against a domineering masterji and Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham (2001), a melodramatic love story of the super-rich with very strong traditional ties in which the class-conscious father throws his son Rahul out of the house because he refused to marry the girl selected by his father. And then there was David Dhawan’s comedy fare Jodi No. 1 (2001), just as there had been in the 1990s.

So, what else did the heart seek in Y2K? What else, but Dil Chahta Hai (2001) — three happy, young, and financially well-off men (Sid, Akash, and Sameer) enjoy their bachelorhood in discos and long drives to Goa. They find their loves, but for the three women Tara, Shalini, and Pooja, their relationships with Sid, Akash, and Sameer respectively were on the rebound. Shalini was engaged to another man, Pooja was dating someone else, and Tara, who was much older than Sid, had presumably already been married. Dil Chahta Hai was a watershed film that signalled that this millennium was going to be about choice and change. In Hum Tum (2004) we see couples taking their own sweet time to check compatibility.

Love stories cannot be rushed into ‘happily-ever-after’ endings — they merely wander, lovers go places, and they all circle back to their pre-destined confluence, as we see in Yeh Jawaani Hai Deewani (2013) and Jab We Met (2007). This era was about dusting off baggage and about finding new relationships if existing ones weren’t working. Moving on was now based on practical and logical reasoning. Lovers, just like consumers, have more options. Kabhi Alvida Na Kehna (2006) was the ultimate liberation story — choose your love without worrying about the social strings attached to your decision to change partners. And this shift in thinking wasn’t restricted to younger people alone. In Jab Tak Hai Jaan (2012), elderly Pooja Thapar Sharqazi leaves her husband and a twelve-year old daughter for another man, but she is not portrayed as a bad woman.

In fact, Pooja explains to her daughter the reason and we are convinced by it. In Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara (2011), Imran’s aged father Salman explains to his son the reason for his walking away from his wife, Imran’s mother, many years ago. From an age where the heroine would sing a sentimental solo after separation from the beloved, Alizeh in Ae Dil Hai Mushkil (2016) celebrates her break-up by singing ‘The Breakup Song’. In Dil Toh Baccha Hai Ji (2011), the divorce between Naren and his wife is as smooth as silk. They not only part ways with a genial smile but she actually advises Naren to consider dating a young colleague of his. This is not to suggest loose morality. This is a pointer to freedom and the means to live and love at one’s own terms, especially among women. The women of Bollywood now gained strength from their financial independence, like Anushka Sharma’s character in Band Baaja Baaraat (2010). In earlier films, a woman separated from her husband and with a baby had to either be a fallen woman or a majboor aurat, cases in point Deewar (1975) and Mother India (1957). But Alisha in Pyaar Impossible! (2010) is a single mother working in Singapore, and she is shown to be able to seek and give love without being subjected to stereotypes.

In Salaam Namaste (2005), we see the unmarried couple Nick and Ambar living together in Australia for convenience, with no moral police sniffing at them. Tu Jhooti Mai Makkar (2023) is candid about pre-marital sex without any compulsion or compunction. Just because they have had sex was no reason to get married. But love stories like Bachna Ae Haseeno (2008) also taught important lessons to casanovas — take your time in selecting partners, but do not cheat anyone, because your past will come back to get you. Young, single men and women have a right to choose the next steppingstone in their careers. In Life in a… Metro (2007), call centre employee Neha sleeps with her boss Ranjit in return for a career boost, but finds true love in her colleague Rahul, who gets to know of her sexual relations with Ranjit. In another era, the script would have branded Neha as a slut. But in this millennium, nobody is judgmental about Neha. Rahul and Neha start their relationship without looking back.

This is Bollywood’s new, mature metrosexual.