(From top) Saif Ali Khan and Preity Zinta in Salaam Namaste; Salman Khan and Katrina Kaif in Maine Pyar Kyun Kiya; Uday Chopra and Tanisha Mukerji in Neal ’N’ Nikki

A fairytale. Once upon a time there was a young boy who was fair as milk and handsome as? well, handsome as handsome can get. He met a girl who was fairer than him and it was love at first sight. He popped the question and they fought their parents long and hard. And then they got married to live happily ever after.

Riding on the back of this belief in ‘happily ever after’ of marriage, many a Bollywood love saga has seen whopping success and many a Bollywoodian has seen a lot of money. From as long as we can remember, the fight of true love against assorted odds to culminate in marriage has formed one of the most successful plots of cinema. It’s always the parents of the lovey-dovey leading couple or a jealous third party that is against marriage. But lately, the pheras are ulta. The M word is beginning to sound scary to the parties directly concerned.

In Siddharth Anand’s Salaam Namaste, Saif Ali Khan plays a young Punjabi NRI who will rather jump off a cliff than get married. But till she accidentally gets pregnant, he’s perfectly happy to be living in with his girlfriend. By average Indian sensibilities, it was an unconventional theme and definitely a risky venture. The fact that the protagonists of the film are based in Melbourne was a cushion that the filmmakers placed under their butts in case a fall sparked off by intolerance ensued. On the subject of unconventional sexual choices, if you say it’s happening abroad, you wash your hands off the atrocity of it all. But the real picture is different. Live-in relationships are a reality, certainly among the urban section of our country.

“Our society is changing,” Saif has been quoted as saying. “There are people who want to be sure about the relationship before committing to marriage. The Indian multiplex audience is now the most ‘forward’. So the film only reflects what’s happening in our society.” And that is why it reflects commitment phobia, a stark reality today.

Though Salaam Namaste is only the first film to tackle this issue head-on, it has been lurking in the background in many scripts for some time now. In Kunal Kohli’s Hum Tum, Saif (coincidence?) played a boy who is a product of a broken home and therefore extremely wary of marriage. But very, very fond of girls.

In David Dhawan’s Maine Pyar Kyun Kiya, Salman played a doctor who told his girlfriend he was already married so that he wouldn’t have to marry her! Aamir Khan played a cynical young fellow just out of college, but pretentiously worldly-wise about the end of all romantic relationships, in Farhan Akhtar’s Dil Chahta Hai. In Meghna Gulzar’s Filhaal..., Sushmita Sen played a Delhi- based photographer who went into a long lecture about the importance of space in a relationship, every time her boyfriend expressed a wish to marry her!

Most youngsters shrug unapologetically at their reluctance to commit and at the rising trend of live-in relationships. In cities like Mumbai, Bangalore and Delhi, the BPO boom has resulted in many live-in relationships. But the idea finds acceptance with a large section of the youth in the rest of the country.

In a survey recently conducted by a daily in conservative Lucknow, 50 per cent of the youth there said they would prefer a live-in relationship to a marriage! This take on live-in relationships is a direct result of the changing attitude of even smalltown youth towards sexual choices. Premarital sex is increasingly becoming the norm. And the youth are voicing their sexual choices openly.

In a recent Telegraph-MODE survey conducted among students and call centre executives between the age group of 18-28, as many as 83 per cent of the women respondents said that virginity was an overrated criterion. The Durex Global Sex Survey 2005 revealed that one out of every four Indians didn’t find anything wrong with sex before marriage. About 56 per cent of the respondents believe it is time men stopped expecting intact hymens in their brides.

A Bangalore-based non-governmental organisation, Freedom Foundation, conducted a similar survey among young people employed in the software and BPO industry last year. and found that 38 per cent men and women believe premarital sex is permissible, while 25 per cent say they regularly indulge in casual sex.

This acceptance of premarital sex primarily among the urban youth is reflected in the ‘young and trendy’, essentially urban films. The latest of the crop is Arjun Sablok’s Neal ’N’ Nikki. In this film, Uday Chopra comes holidaying to Canada before he ties the knot with a smalltown girl that his father has chosen for him. He half-heartedly gives in to the marriage only on the condition that he is allowed to ‘enjoy’ his life first. So he backpacks to phoren where he can enjoy (read: bonk) all he wants before D-Day or rather, M-Day!

“The definition of marriage in urban India is changing,” director Pooja Bhatt has said. “Women may now want to get married at 45. Do we expect them not to have a physical relationship until then?” In any case, premarital sex has been a reality for some time. It’s just the numbers that are increasing now. And, therefore, the tolerance. In 1975, in K.S. Sethumadhdavan’s Julie, Lakshmi was packed off to the back of beyond when she got pregnant out of wedlock. In 2005, Kundan Shah’s Kya Kehna! showed a pregnant Preity Zinta’s family stubbornly stand by her, as she faced the world.

From shoving all talk of sex ? even sex education ? under the carpet, to circulating clippings of sex scandals on mobile phones; things have come a long way. Onscreen live-in relationships and sex before marriage are now not just a part of the bad girl’s lifestyle as they were in films like Mahesh Bhatt’s Arth and Yash Chopra’s Deewaar. Because an increasing number in the audience are now able to relate to the characters. The young audience of today likes to see itself and the characters onscreen, as flesh and blood people, with real needs, real problems and real solutions.

And these people who throw back their streaked hair and take these bold steps forward are primarily what Saif and many others describe as the ‘multiplex audience’. Living away from home, earning fat pay packets and witnessing the influences of the Western culture, they form their own opinions and decide their own preferences, sexual or otherwise.

But somehow, something seems amiss. At least in the filmmakers’ portrayal of these youngsters. And this brings us to a string of unanswered questions. Are the days of Shah Rukh-Kajol attempts to win over their parents to the idea of their match over? Are those days gone when a drop of blood smeared in the parting of the leading lady’s head in a moment of passion, resulted in a sexual encounter and even excused her if she got pregnant? Are today’s youth really only about sexual liberation and little else? Do all of them really prefer pizzas to paraathas and sex to shaadi?