I see married men...

Like Cole Sear in Sixth Sense - M Night Shyamalan's (only) scary movie - sees dead people all the time and is understandably spooked, I am spooked too. Each time I look at our Hindi film industry, from the leading men (or men) we have to the movies we are making, I am constantly on an, 'I see married people' spook-trip. Then of course there is the case of the Bee-dom...

Like earlier, when deciding what movie to go for, the question used to be, "Are we going for a Hollywood or a Bollywood movie?" Then it became, "Is it small budget, big budget, or an independent film?" Or developed into a , "Khan or non-Khan movie?" Till the debate was over, "Ram Gopal Verma or Karan Johar?" And now finally, Fridays have become about, "Bachchan or no Bachchan?" Even international films come with voice-overs in the Big Bee's voice. I hear him in my sleep too.

And if a constant Bee Barrage was not enough, there is the other rather spooky-fying factor... The fact(or) that all our leading men are married (and ageing). Look around: while the girls are getting younger by the day - Jiah Khan is supposedly 18 and there's that 16-year-old TV-star-who-played-double-role who is apparently the latest 'it' woman (woman?) to flutter many a mundu down south.

Now just because older men CAN romance younger women - and because we don't have any young men in the industry - does it mean that we will have the lead pair with a visibly huge age gap?

We've already had an almost-post-pubescent girl romance grandpa (Nishabd), a pre-menopausal 30-something romance a mentor-figure (Cheeni Kum) and a borderline-body-clock case 29-year-old romance a dignified judge (Jogger's Park)... Next, what will we have? A 15-year-old and the English teacher, age 34? Or a legally-adult 18-year-old and midlife crisis type 42-year-old? Whatever happened to the good, old college romance or even young-adult romance, or 'normal' relationship stories?

I mean, if you don't care about What Will Happen To Our Movies, at least think about entertainment value. How fair is it, while the men get one poster girl after another, there is no poster boy for the women? No amount of working-out can change the fact that Sallu 'baba' is neither a boy nor a 'baba' anymore. At least if they did something new in their movies, not the same old...

Yes, there are good movies being made, but then audience memory is short! Between one good movie (and another that will be banned) and 15 mad ones - and Big Bee in at least eight of them - I really don't know what's happening. Other than noticing that ALL lead actors are married! And please, don't name Abhay Deol, Emran Hashmi or Shahid Kapur as answers to anything, that's even spookier.

Hmm... though given the Age Gap Genre, my all-time favourite, still, is Yash Chopra's Lamhe. The chemistry between Sridevi-Anil Kapoor-Anupam Kher still rocks. It still makes me laugh. And feel bad for mooch-less Kunwarji when Pallo married the pilot. And wonder why couldn't they dub Deepak Chopra's voice? And it's the only desi movie so far where I CAN see the confusion of the older man and understand why the younger woman likes him too. And it did not have Big Bee!

What say people?
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