If Rang De Basanti is any indication, buddy films are back with a bang. They have been there all the time but surface to flood the scenario suddenly from time to time. Flashback to August 15, 1975.

Novelty theatre in Mumbai was geared up, overhauled and given a thorough dressing up with 70 mm screen backed up by stereophonic sound to premiere one of the 20 th century's greatest hits in history – Sholay. The film gave a new boost to buddy films as well as to the screen images of Dharmendra as Veeru and Amitabh Bachchan as Jay.

Veeru and Jai steal a motorcycle with a sidecar and burst into a rollicking yeh dosti, hum nahin bhoolenge. It is not simply a celebration of manic, vaguely anti-social freedom, but an ingeniously choreographed male love-duet, as they affirm their eternal friendship (dosti) during a joyride through a scenic obstacle course dotted with banyan trees and hapless rustics.

Some years later, there was another small-budget double of the original called Aaj Ka Sholay 'starring' interesting look-alikes of the stars in the main film. Contrary to snobbish expectations, this film too, went on to become a bumper hit, investing the small-time 'double' who played Jai with star status in 'C' grade films.

The charisma of Sholay continues to hold us in a sort of hypnotic trance and one of the major reasons is the cinematographic ex-pression of the friendship between two small-time criminals who are as different from each other as chalk from cheese.

While Jai is the quiet one, incredibly sober for his profession, with a dry sense of humour, Veeru is funny, frothy and somewhat foolish, falling for the first pretty girl who crosses his path. What holds them together are their common criminal acts, their time shared in prison and the emotions that have grown through this sharing.

Hrishikesh Mukherjee organized more sedate versions of male bonding with his typical melodramatic twists through two films – Anand and Namak Haram. Though Anand has never been interpreted as a buddy film, the growing relationship between Anand and his doctor forms one of the high points of the film.

The entire narrative focuses on the friendship between two young men unequal in class, status and temperament, culminating in a pessimistic statement about such friendships having to end in tragedy.

In the mid-Eighties, Tezaab starring Anil Kapoor portrayed the angst of a gone-astray youth who could be moved by the travails of a vulnerable young girl. Gulzar's Mere Apne, borrowed from an original Bengali hit, ran along similar lines. But buddy relationships in both these films were incidental to the main theme.

Other interesting films followed suit, such as Hera Pheri with Amitabh Bachchan and Vinod Khanna, a wonderful action flick that was a box office hit. Hindi cinema often finds itself balancing the tightrope walk between the two polarities of being buddies and being gay lovers.

A good example is the friendship between Shahrukh Khan and Saif Ali Khan in Kal Ho Na Ho where they keep teasing the housekeeper (Sulbha Arya) who is scandalized by their closeness and interprets the friendship differently.

Though it is used to inject humour in an otherwise sad story, it is a sad comment on our filmmakers' approach to alternative sexuality. My Brother Nikhil is however an exception where the male protagonists are a gay couple.

Jhankar Beats in English offers a moving and realistic insight into male bonding that reflects the spirit of the times we live in.

The openness among the friends, which includes sharing the anxiety of the husband as his wife is about to deliver a baby, counterpointed with the realization of his dreams of winning the top prize at a music contest, is presented brilliantly.

Can one call Dhoom a male-buddy film? Not really because there is actually a scene in the film that clearly describes that the action heroes are together only to pull big time robberies with dare-devil acts on their sophisticated two-wheelers. They are together for work, and to share the loot, but friendship is conspicuous by its absence.

Yet, there is this 'male buddy' air that runs through the film, underscored through the love-hate relationship between the garage mechanic character (an outstanding performance by Uday Chopra) and the police officer portrayed by Abishek with zest. The chemistry between the actors is excellent, making one wait for more of the same in another film.

Sunil Darshan's Dosti could be easily labelled a male-buddy film though it does lose its way in the second half. In "Dosti" we meet two friends who are ready to die for each other. The rich one, Bobby Deol, spends his time making out with sundry floozies in girls hostels while the poor one, Akshay Kumar, keeps bailing him out.

What really hit gold in terms of buddy films in Bollywood is Farhan Akhtar's debut film Dil Chahta Hai. Every single minute portraying the three friends who fight, argue, have fun, shake a leg and are almost inseparable is a joy to watch.

Each character is fleshed out in great detail, leaving absolutely no room for any homosexual innuendo, incidental or intended. Sparkling performances and a beautifully orchestrated script successfully marginalizes the love angle to the friendship motif.

This is no token tribute to the male buddy film. It is what a male buddy film ought to be. Perhaps this was the turning point film that began the entire trend in male buddy films.

But the infinite charm of Dil Chahta Hai was never repeated except in a slightly different, cruder version in Vidhu Vinod Chopra's Munnabhai MBBS where the unlettered, street-side ruffians have a gala time playing carom with a doddering old man when they are not up to their normal antics.

Rang De Basanti offers a true tribute to male bonding. But male bonding is not really the theme of the film. It makes a strong statement on celluloid about the changes in perspective and values that youngsters could open up to if some cathartic event, such as being roped in to play roles in a film on one incident in India's struggle for independence, happens to them.

But then, with Amir Khan heading the star cast and a whopping budget of Rs.35 crore, a young filmmaker like Rakyesh Omprakash Mehra did not really have the option of failing.