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The times sure are changing. Gone are the days when most Hindi films would end with a snapshot of a gleeful bride and groom tying the knot in the presence of an extended doting family.

The Mumbai studio-based Hindi film trade is rewriting its script. Movies now begin with what happens the day after a boy meets a girl and they fall in love. In Bollywood of today, mistrust and infidelity are the reigning themes.

So much so that even a 400-years-old tale, “Othello”, penned by William Shakespeare, has found relevance in this week’s release “Omkara” by composer-cum-filmmaker Vishal Bharadwaj.

The film has bowled over critics and has all the makings of raking in big bucks, given its backdrop in India’s most populous state of Uttar Pradesh.

Power performances by Ajay Devgan as a man besieged with mistrust, Kareena Kapoor who essays the role of his wife and Saif Ali Khan who spins a web of lies and deceit along with Naseerudin Shah, Konkana SenSharma and Viveik Oberoi have set Mumbai talking.

The bedroom politics that ensue in this flesh and blood drama in the backdrop of India’s cow-belt have brought mainstream Hindi cinema closest to real life than ever before.

For some time now, Bollywood has been trying desperately to crack the code for a commercially successful though critically sound film. As if on cue, most filmmakers have latched on to films with betrayal and infidelity as the themes that save the day.

What began as plots that pivot on lust and libido in films like “Jism,” “Hawas” or “Murder” where brave new heroines break conventions and shed clothes, are now more realistic depiction of human relations and modern Indian marriages.

Not so long ago, dream merchants had found promiscuity as the favourite excuse to unleash skin show. For some time it seemed audiences were showing remarkable maturity of thought, flexibility of morals and an eagerness to cater to the Satan within.

“Body knows no love, it only respects desire,” screamed the taglines of the skin shows and crowd of cinegoers nodded in affirmation. Then came a slew of sex comedies where men would sow wild oats in Bollywood, as in “Masti” and “No Entry”.

Now the skin shows and brazen sex comedies are giving way to mass entertainers that are nearly a reflection of today’s society - a society that no longer identifies with glossy family dramas in which the united Hindu family is unabashedly celebrated and propagated.

Recently, a $370,000-budget film by Rajat Kapoor about a couple swinging in Mumbai titled “Mixed Doubles” that was expected to fade out grossed $730,000.

Even the most commercially successful filmmaker of our times, Karan Johar, has swayed away and with “Kabhi Alvida Naa Kehna” (”Never Say Goodbye”), he enters alien, high-risk territory - the modern Indian marriage.

After making “Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham” with a tagline of “It’s all about loving your parents,” he has gone to “Kabhi Alvida Naa Kehna”, which is being sold as “a love that broke all relationships”.

The success or failure of “Kabhi Alvida…” will test how much audiences are willing to let go of the favourite family fantasy.