(Top) Dia Mirza and Saif Ali Khan in a moment from Parineeta; Shah Rukh Khan and Aishwarya Rai in Devdas

Isshhh! Tumi ki bouka...
Khopche mein leke doon kya kharcha paani...
Treat me like an animal...

Even a few years back, a lot of hue and cry was made over the flexibility of the language used in a Bollywood film. The media went on to innovate a term, Hinglish, to brand the films that used a liberal sprinkling of English dialogues despite staying within the parameters of a Hindi film.

Films like Dev Benegal?s English August, Kaizad Gustad?s Bombay Boys and more recently Boom were clubbed in that genre and even a niche multiplex audience started to evolve, that followed both languages and didn?t mind the switch from one to the other.

But the way things are shaping up, there is perhaps a need to introduce more such terms or treat Bollywood as sab kuch chalta hai (anything goes).

Recent releases have shown that Hindi films are beyond the national language and do not fear to incorporate regional languages ? sometimes to bring about an authentic feel to the proceedings, sometimes to do justice to the adaptation of a literary work, sometimes to cater to the particular region.

At times, the forced usage of a regional language can be noise to the ears (remember the grating sound of bondhu and bouka in Sanjay Leela Bhansali?s Devdas?). This was a follow up to the liberal sprinkling of Gujarati in the same director?s Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam. In the context of the film, it?s more important to get the feel of the setting right than the exact articulation of the word.

(Top) Padma Lakshmi, Madhu Sapre and Katrina Kaif in Boom; Sanjay Dutt, Arshad Warsi and others in Munnabhai MBBS

The question that arises then is about quantity and not quality. How much of a regional language do you use in a Hindi film that is supposed to woo audiences from Kashmir to Kanyakumari? The greater part of the Amitabh Bachchan-Hema Malini sub-plot in Yash Chopra?s latest love saga Veer-Zaara is in chaste Punjabi, making it at times impossible to comprehend. Yes, they are Punjabis living in villages, miles away from the urban waves but if you can take every cinematic liberty in the book, why not play around a bit with the language. If a viewer sitting in Bihar misses out on a Big B joke in the film because he can?t follow the language he speaks, it?s more of Chopra?s inability to reach out to the pan-Indian audience. Isn?t it?

The target audience thus becomes singularly important. While Chopra would love every Indian to spend three-and-a-half hours watching his ?new love legend?, a Ram Gopal Varma knows that his Naach is not for everyone. So he doesn?t mind making Abhishek Bachchan confess his love for Antara Mali in English. In a beautifully poignant moment, Abhishek uses phrases like ?I love your smile?, ?I love your eyes?, ?I love your dance? rather than the clich?d Hindi words mouthed in every second Bollywood potboiler.

Priyadarshan, a master of the rural set-up, chooses to lend a very rustic twang to the spoken word. Whether it?s Virasat or Yeh Tera Ghar Yeh Mera Ghar or the new release Hulchul, his characters speak in a diction which may be alien to the disc-hopping crowds, yet very understandable. So he not only retains the yuppie crowd, he also ropes in a lot of village audiences.

The bhai lingo also finds frequent usage in Bollywood films. From Aamir Khan?s Munna in Rangeela to Sanjay Dutt?s Munnabhai with Vivek Oberoi?s Chandu Nagre thrown in for Company, the language plays as big a role as the get-up and other add-ons.

There is, of course, another school of thought and that is not to tamper with the Hindi language at all and even make necessary changes for the dialogues to sound more intimate. For Parineeta, co-writers Pradeep Sarkar and Vidhu Vinod Chopra have not included a single Bengali word in the script despite the film being an adaptation of the Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay classic. In fact, Sanjay Dutt?s name has been changed from Girin to Girish, since ?Girin sounds too Bengali?.