Bollywood relationships: A dummy's guide to who's whose

As someone who’s lived on the fringes of Bollywood, I’m often asked by people who are fascinated by it to verify if Mumbai’s leading hunk is indeed shticking it to his current leading lady.

I could be sitting in a fine dining eatery. In Madrid. About to delve in to a salmon lightly braised in lemon-dill sauce, when a Hermes and Pucci-clad heiress will get that slightly manic look that I instantly recognize, and ask me straight out if Ranbir Kapoor (who’s reported to have more ex-lover notches on his belt than Carla Bruni,) is really, really having it off with X, Y or Z co-star.

Let’s face it, as a subject of study Bollywood has never been as kitschy cool and coolly kitsch as it is right now.

The subject of Harvard dissertations and a million good-natured spoofs on YouTube, filmmaking in India has gone from being an Asian assembly-line celluloid factory into something that enhances and informs global pop culture.

Yet nothing about it attracts as much fascination as its stars and their love lives.

This dummy’s guide to Bollywood relationships clears the smoke and mirrors and sets the parameters for who’s whose and who’s doing it to whom, who's telling and who's not.

Around the block

Yes it’s true. They’re all doing it.

With your nose pressed against the Bollywood glass it can seem like everyone inside's playing party games with their hearts?

You know what? They are.

Just get a hang of this: Bollywood’s reigning celestial body, actor Salman Khan, famously loved and lost actress Aishwariya Rai (the world’s most beautiful pregnant woman) to actor Abhishek Bachchan, then dated one of its most bankable young leading ladies Katrina Kaif on the rebound.

Lost her to the young Ranbir Kapoor (him of the Carla Bruni belt notches) who just happens to be the cousin of Karishma Kapoor, the actress Abhishek was engaged to before he married Aishwariya.

And if that leaves you confused, so are we.

They’re just good friends

Gone are the days when stars went to great lengths (read a motel in Madh island) to cover up their romance.

Today’s Bollywood brat pack is nothing if not innovative in its creative approach to PDA.

From the impossibly long-legged former model turned actress Deepika Padukone’s lip-lock with the beer and airline heir Siddharth Mallya on the occasion of his cricket team’s victory; to the 70mm tattoo of girlfriend actress Kareena Kapoor’s first name on the sultry nabob/actor Saif Khan’s bicep; to actress Preeti Zinta and industrialist Ness Wadia love cemented on the foundation of a joint stake in an Indian Premier League cricket team to the love 'em and leave 'em Miss Universe Sushmita Sen, who flaunts solitaires the size of pigeon’s eggs from paramours, to yesteryear’s silver screen diva Rekha who never fails to allude coyly to her heartthrob in every interview she gives.

In Bollywood, and all over page three of the morning paper, will the love that dare not speak its name -- kindly shut up!

In the bare-all, tell-all game those who deny decline and dismiss their affairs like actress Rani Mukherjee and director Aditya Chopra only come across as eccentric and so yesterday.

B is for bi-sexy

In what appears to be the heterosexual hormone-propelled circus of Bollywood relationships, those with different persuasions are treated with respect and even awe.

No one can say if Bollywood’s current preoccupation with playing for both teams is a recent phenomena or has only now become a talking point.

Suffice to say that except for the star-struck gauche outsider’s interest in Bollywood’s boy’s only club, even the gossip mags follow a don’t ask don’t tell policy as far as sexual orientations go.

So if you really want to know if that much married leading actor or director is a poof, and whether on occasion they're even poofy together -- develop your own gaydar.

Sexual orientation in Bollywood has finally come of age. But no one’s telling.

Sound of one heart breaking

People often ask me if in this revolving door of relationships, Bollywood stars actually feel the same way about love, lust, longing and loss as the rest of us.

The answer to this is yes they do.

If you prick them they bleed. Just because they look like they’re genetically engineered and packaged in cosmetic labs does not mean that they don’t suffer from the same heartbreaks as ordinary Joe or Jai.

Two well-known leading ladies have struggled with substance abuse after their breakups with their beloveds, one possessive and tormented hunk resorted to violence to subjugate his leading lady, and eating disorders, binging, love on the rebound, illegitimate offspring and unrequited passion are all par for Bollywood’s course.

What do you expect? Here's an industry bursting at the seams with extraordinarily beautiful, super fit, successful and famous people, tons of who are also insecure, emotionally needy, lonely and narcissistic.

Poet Robert Frost said, “Love is an irresistible desire to be irresistibly desired.”

My friend, the famous Bollywood leading lady, puts it to me this way, "When you go home to bed after a long day’s shooting -- you can’t cuddle your fan club.”

They're saying the same thing.