Forever young!

Is it some kind of a ‘suspension in disbelief’ that works in Bollywood? Or is it some kind of a trick played on the audience that we accept what we see on screen?

Well, the reason for this outburst started while watching the movie Cocktail starring Saif Ali Khan. His character is a flirt of the first order, sleeps around with babes and has a mon in tow who wants to find a beautiful Indian bride for eligible bachelor puttarji. i mean this man is actually 42 yrs old in real life with 2 grown up children! This is 2011. Rewind a whole decade and you’ll find Saif playing pretty much the same character in Dil Chahta Hai - the flirtatious, confused casanova nt knowing where to look for love! (Worth looking up Kal Ho Na Ho in 2003 and Hum Tum in 2004 in very similar contexts)

On the same lines, i still can’t believe that it’s possible to accept a 44 yr old actor as a first year engineering student!! Look at them in real life and they definitely look just out of school kids. But we just didn’t accept Aamir in 3 idiots, we also went to make the movie one of the highest grosser of the year. (Even in DCH, Aamir portrayed a college student while he was actually 36 then!)

Since most male actors in Bollywood easily have a career span of more than 2 decades, most of them end up playing college-going, mushy, romantic heroes for at least the entire first decade of their careers. It has never mattered that the age of the leading ladies keeps getting half their actual age! (Since a female actor is never going to be playing the same kind of roles as the men at 40! They come pretty young and die away that fast)

i know these guys work really hard at their looks. And Aamir definitely has succeeded a lot more than his other Khan counterparts. But what beats me is how magically people keep playing characters half their age and we as audience never find it out of place. It’s all so magically woven in to the masala that Bollywood is, that we just flow along! i really don't know what to make of this. i'd appreciate if you all can share what do you feel about all this?