There’s a new mutual admiration society brewing in the Hindi film industry between Salman Khan and Ajay Devgn, both of whom have hard core action fare on release this season (Devgn’s Singham and Khan’s Bodyguard). While Salman tweeted his admiration for Ajay’s superb bare torso in Singham, the latter returned the compliment by tweeting that Bodyguard would be a blockbuster. It’s male bonding time for the two stars whose two-way traffic of compliments ensures that both their films keep getting the notice all new releases yearn for these days.

Apart from obvious common ground like their macho images which can also carry off comic entertainment, Salman and Ajay both like their booze (and sometimes babes) binges, the after-effects of which are washed away with gruelling hours in the gym. They are also secure actors who don’t sniff around for non-existent competition like Akshay Kumar is wont to do. (Every time one of his films flops, Akki will have a sabotage story from the enemy camp put out with the opponent invariably unnamed.)

The other day, after Ajay had packed up his work at Mehboob Studio, he checked where Salman was shooting Bodyguard and drove across to spend the rest of the evening with his new buddy. A film starring both of them will be the obvious result of all these meetings. Watching Singham and Bodyguard blend into one action film should be interesting especially since they have so far only done dramatic films together (Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam, a hit, and London Dreams, a flop).

One of the signs that a filmmaker or actor is super confident of his new film is when he happily holds a series of trial shows. Salman did that with Dabangg and Ready, Ajay did that this week with Singham where there were umpteen preview shows all over Bandra. In fact, on Wednesday and Thursday, there were more shows than there were prints, so Devgn couldn’t accommodate all the requests that poured in from friends and colleagues. Of course, Ajay did hold a very special trial for Salman’s family and was upbeat after Salim Khan called him and discussed the film for half an hour.

With a blockbuster hit like Singham, the question being asked is a routine one — have action films made a fantastic comeback? The answer is no. Because this season the film industry has seen a variety of films making big money — Ready, Delhi Belly, Double Dhamaal (a bad film that benefited solely from a hearty opening weekend), Murder 2 and Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara have all done well in varying degrees. The only thing they have in common is that they are all well-made films in their own genre.

The other question being asked today is, does the currently gossiped about intimacy between Shah Rukh Khan and Priyanka Chopra have more to do with promoting Don 2 than with any real life chemistry? Sure seems like it. Years ago, when his children weren’t even around, Shah Rukh and Gauri Khan had got abusive and vocally aggressive over a very fleeting insinuation about him and Juhi Chawla in a magazine that I was editing. Curiously, I was on maternity leave and when a four letter word spouting Shah Rukh had called me up at home, he said he knew that I was on maternity leave but was too angry to take it lying down. The next day, an equally colourful Gauri was on the phone all day while Shah Rukh parked himself in our office!

Today, there are kids involved but not even a whimper of protest from Khan or wife? On the contrary, he’s nonchalant about sharing stage space with Priyanka (at IFAA, at the Reddy wedding et al) and continues to be quite the charmer with her. I’d like to believe that it’s simply because he’s grown up now and knows that ultimately none of these careless whispers can damage his family life.

But even as the SRK-Priyanka Don 2 mystery continues, here comes news that Sajid Khan and Jacqueline Fernandes are not really seeing each other. Despite several stories about them in the dailies, including one that his staff call her bhabhi, if this Khan too isn’t really protesting, one is told that it’s because any publicity is good promotion for their film Houseful 2.

Bharathi S. Pradhan is editor, The Film Street Journal