There is a moment in the now-cult movie Dil Chahta Hai where the three carefree buddies, played superbly by Aamir, Saif and Akshaye, are sailing and looking out to the sea gravely. And then, all three of them turn and look at each other at the same precise moment and burst into back-thumping laughter. Aamir revealed in an interview that it was one of the most difficult shots in the movie. Indeed it must have been.

It is not real life where friends achieve such bonding smoothly, unthinkingly. In reel life, for three people to change expressions from dead serious to dead silly and do the changing at the same moment must have taken many a retake.

That is one of my favourite onscreen ‘friendship moments’ in recent times. In close competition is Rang De Basanti’s bitter-sweet dialogue baazi in a lounge bar just before the character played by Madhavan meets a tragic end. And the dramatic recall that scene inspires in the group of friends when they are mourning their dead mate in exactly the same way that they had play-acted earlier.

Actually, there are not a great many Bollywood movies on friendship. Unless you take into consideration the countless flicks that go round and round the yet-unsolved question of whether love is friendship or friendship is friendship or friendship is love...(Okey, it all means the same thing. Please credit this confusion to Karan Johar and Yash Chopra.) Take Kuch Kuch Hota Hai for instance and the famous scene where Shahrukh, Kajol and Rani are playing the fool in an English class and the English teacher comes up with the mind-numbing question ‘Rahul, pyar kya hai?” And Rahul replies nonchalantly ‘Pyar dosti hai’. There! Could you have ever thought of such a simple and wise answer? Incidentally, just so that the audience does not miss the point, the three protagonists are sitting in such a way that if you draw a line connecting them, it would form a triangle!

Love? Friendship?

Then there is Yash Chopra, the granddaddy of Johar brand of filmmaking. In Dil to Pagal Hai, he tackles just about the same question but with a twist. Here, Shahrukh is buddy-buddy with Karisma Kapoor’s character but falls in love with Madhuri Dixit. Now, Yash Chopra, in the movie’s prologue, makes it clear that everybody drops from heaven to earth in pairs; and it is for us to figure out who we fell down with! So, obviously if you have known a girl all your life and are really close to her, she is not the one you parachuted down with. The inference? ‘Pyar pyar hai, dosti pyar nahi hai’. Confused? That was mine as well as Chopra’s intention.

Buddydom

Real friendship movies stick to you like chewing gum. When you think about the characters, their individual life stories and the inevitable poignant scenes of separation/disagreements, you are transported to similar moments in your own life — not as exaggerated and dramatic perhaps but no less soul-warming. They make you think about the few real friends you have and make you soppy enough to thank God for their existence.

Though Sholay cannot be termed a friendship movie as such, Jai and Veeru’s pairing inspires such thoughts. Theirs is the kind of friendship where opposites work in tandem  — Veeru’s goofiness versus Jai’s brooding; Veeru’s happy drunken eyes versus Jai’s lit-with-sadness ones...

The 1964 classic Dosti about the friendship that grows between two tortured souls, the penniless and homeless Ramnath and the blind Mohan gave us one of the most enchanting songs of Bollywood ever, ‘Chahoonga Mein Tujhe’ a paean to friendship as much as to love.

Many super-popular television sitcoms have minted money by stressing on buddydom. There’s Friends, which is having perhaps its 800th rerun on TV right now; Desperate Housewives where the gals bond over, well, desperation and of course Sex and the City where friendships are strengthened by dirty talk and Jimmy Choos.
Hollywood, on the other hand, has several odes to friendship but the one that springs to the mind is the 1995 movie ‘Now and then’ about a group of girls who start out as friends at the age of 12 and continue their friendship throughout their life. A great take on growing pains, first love and growing up, the movie portrays beautifully how sustaining friendship can be. And is proof to how sustaining movies on friendship are.