Brainy is the new sexy" might be in vogue thanks to the cool Irene Adler's comment in the critically acclaimed Sherlock Holmes series on BBC, but could it just be the delusion of some nerd who wrote the show. Can geek ever equal hot?

When it comes to how women view men, this may be true. In fact, it always has been. Perhaps Pandit Nehru was our first brush with a "cerebral sexiness" well before the jet-setting playboy came to be around. The man was erudite, cosmopolitan and stunningly well-read. When it came to popular culture, too, brain has always been a parallel force to brawn. For every macho Clint Eastwood and yummy Robert Redford, there was a scrawny bespectacled Woody Allen who managed to get some of the most gorgeous women of Hollywood into bed, his eternal angst notwithstanding. Then came the dotcom boom and suddenly, the nerd became the game-changer. Brainy was, in fact, sexy, even powerful.

Aha. And how do men feel about intelligent women? "Let's face it, " says Advaita Kala, author and screenplay writer of Kahani. "As far as Indian men are concerned, they don't like to be challenged beyond a point. They like to be challenged only to the point of being amused. And I'm not talking about the stereotypical north-Indian Jat. Even a sophisticated intelligent man gets uncomfortable if he is challenged on his views on politics or business or society. So, men are not very comfortable with women being too opinionated or vociferous. You constantly see women playing to what men want. You actually see women morphing to suit this need, often unknowingly, which is even more scary. "

Media in India still uses terms like 'item number' to describe a sexy woman. A quick turn of the pages of any newspaper or magazine reveals ridiculous images of long-legged booby peroxides attempting to fit into some dated version of what is considered 'sexy' by men. A young attractive bachelor in Mumbai, who swears that he is always looking for the company of an intelligent woman, says that most of his men friends are not of his ilk. "Yes, men like to have both looks and personality in their partner, but even the most intelligent men will suffer a dumb woman. It's all about arm candy and scoring. When it comes to marriage, they want the woman to be their obedient slave and when they are bored, they will probably go out and have an affair with someone who can stimulate them intellectually. "

So, in an ideal world, brainy may be the new sexy, but it depends on whose court the balls are in, so to speak.