Come the eighties and the whole process of falling in love changed all over again. Coy love was back, but in a very well-defined form. Here were plastic earrings and tight kurtas that skipped around the Brindavan gardens. These co-existed with glamorous beauties like Parveen Babi and Zeenat Aman. These were days of contemporary beauty and current love.

Amitabh Bachchan in his various avatars was firmly entrenched in the cinegoers's mind. Anyone else (including his heroines) was around him just as a matter of chance. Vinod Khanna or Shashi Kapoor usually played the second fiddle, very convincingly too. Dual hero, dual heroine days had arrived. More glamour, more love, more romance, more prettiness… more foreign locales and of course, more Amitabh Bachchan with Rakhee, more AB with Rekha, more AB with Neetu Singh, more AB with Parveen Babi, Zeenat Aman, with Smita Patil, with Rekha, even with Sridevi… It was AB all the way. Dancing (to a remix of Bhagwan Dada's tunes), flirting with Zeenie baby in the Swiss alps or looking deep into Rekha's eyes in the most controversial film of its times, Silsila, Abby baby had the capacity to turn every female knee to jelly.

Romance, for a number of years, was a tall, silent and handsome hero, wooing an overdressed and often over-painted female… any female. Songs, dance and music were a shade weaker than in the sixties; youth was not the deciding factor. The teeny-bopper star brigade hadn't arrived yet and so, love was a matured activity.

By the end of the eighties, another generation was changing the baton, romance was evolving. Amitabh had been badly wounded in a shooting accident and things were no longer the same for a few years. The Anil Kapoors and Jackie Shroffs were gaining foothold. Meri Jung and then Hero declared a new wind… love was becoming adamant, and winning. The girl and the boy were no longer sweet seventeen, they were intelligent and assertive. Life was changing. A Lamhe was sweeping the younger generation with imaginative romance while Chandni found a new audience - love for the small-towner. An addition to the siren's brigade was Sridevi.

Love was a call in this decade. There were myriad situations, the social changes alone ensured that no two situations were alike. At one time, there was a Gol Mal with clean, family-oriented love, or a Khoobsurat with more pranks than romance. On the other hand was Umrao Jaan, of classical, unrequited love. Hrishikesh Mukherjee and the two Basus, Bhattacharya and Chatterjee, were having a field day, making beautiful, clean, small budget films alongside megastarrers like Qurbani, of the flamboyant Feroze Khan. Jaanbaaz was to follow. A very interesting aspect was the entry of Southern starts like Sridevi, Jayaprada and even Kamal Haasan. With Dimple Kapadia's comeback film, Sagar, he established himself as an extremely talented actor. However, Rishi Kapoor got the girl! Sagar was actually Love in Goa. Beautiful locales were finally arriving. Love was in the air and it couldn't be hidden.