'They have been serious for a few years now, and there is talk that they might finally do it," the friend said.

Through rumours of a split, the couple have stayed together, and the friend insisted that the relationship was quite a serious and a mature one. 'They don't even feel the need to confront each other with rumours any more," she said.

Another reason that the talk of marriage is surfacing is age: John is 37 and Bipasha is 31.

Though they have tried hard to break through into the top rung of Bollywood, neither has really succeeded. Bipasha has four movies this year, but none of them is a big release. The one significant film she has is Nishaad, with Ajay Devgn and Akshay Khanna, but even that has another heroine sharing the stage, the southern star Reemma.

Bipasha gets a lot of recognition for her item numbers, but has not been in a standout heroine's role for years.

"She isn't worried about that, and she thinks that she is on the verge of breaking through," the friend said, dismissing the idea that the talk of marriage was triggered by her career's graph.

John had a career surge three years ago when he was part of Dhoom, but since then, his career has been drifting, and except for the odd multi-starrer like Dostana, he's had very little to show for his star power.

He has one release coming up, 1-800-Love, but there aren't too many big films that are being signed with him in it. Reports of his signing major multi-movie contracts have not been borne out on the ground.