Bengal should take a bow. When directors Anurag Basu and Sujoy Ghosh recently walked away with trophies for their work, it was a proud moment for Hindi cinema because each had made a film where the main heroine (Priyanka Chopra in Barfi! and Vidya Balan in Kahaani) had to drop her vanity case and pick up unaesthetic prosthetics to play her part. That both films worked well with a wide, receptive audience as well as with awards juries, was proof that absorbing content can make an appreciable connection, not glamour and great bods alone.

Taking the risk of dividing ourselves along regional lines, it has to be observed that the arrival of makers like Basu and Ghosh was much-awaited by those who wanted relief from the predominantly Punjabi ambience of Hindi cinema. Sarson ka saag and karva chauth are fine, but there is an India beyond the green fields of Punjab. And there is an India where women are regular people, not always perfectly made up by Mickey Contractor or dressed up glamorously by Manish Malhotra, and ready to break into a bhangra.

Filmmakers like Bimal Roy, Hrishikesh Mukherjee and Basu Chatterjee (also Basu Bhattacharya, sometimes) had ordinary women in extraordinary situations in their films. With filmmakers like Sujoy and Anurag, perhaps Hindi cinema can again look forward to a refreshing break, at least once in a while, from the designer-wear women that Punjabi filmmakers seem to be so fond of. Sujoy is already in the UK, seriously working on Kahaani 2.

There is another refreshing change that the film industry will soon see and that will be the entry of a sea of new star sons. (Sorry, but the dynasty obsession will continue.) Some of them look interestingly different. One is Jackie Shroff's son, Tiger. Once keen only on sports, the tide turned two years ago when Tiger began prepping for a life in films. Dad Jackie had him go through it all — training in acting, horse-riding, action, dancing, the works.

“It’s hard to believe that Tiger was once such a fussy eater, he would hardly eat. Jackie would call me up and say, make him eat at your place, he’s a little scared of you,” laughed the man from Sikkim, Danny Denzongpa. Jackie, Danny and villain Ranjeet have been firm friends for decades and their respective sons are also childhood buddies. All three boys are ultimately looking at an acting career even if right now Rinzing Denzongpa studies business in the UK and what Jeeva, Ranjeet’s son, really wanted was to hit the fast track as a race car driver. It proved too expensive a passion for his parents, so Jeeva’s Plan B is to turn to films.

All three boys also hit the gym regularly. “Such focussed boys,” Danny observed. “Tiger has built his body so well, he’s strong as a bull and can polish off a chicken and a half at one go. It’s hard to believe that as a child he wouldn’t eat at all.”

Danny himself is well-preserved for someone in his 60s. “I had decided to retire after Robot (the Rajinikanth film), to call it a day after a big project like that,” he recently shared over dinner at Ranjeet’s place. The actor who is a very successful businessman went back home to Sikkim where he has his breweries and realised that during the harsh winter and the monsoon he had to come down to Mumbai (he has a fantastic bungalow in Juhu). So out went retirement.

Danny has picked up two big films — as his winter schedule, he will wrap up the Akshay Kumar film Boss by March, and then during the rains, Siddharth Anand will fly him to Czechoslovakia to shoot the Hrithik Roshan-Katrina Kaif film Bang Bang, inspired by Knight And Day. Incidentally, Siddharth has got Sujoy Ghosh to help him with the script, so we’re back to where we began.

PS: Apropos the latest Khan controversy, remember the time SRK spoke up for including Pak cricketers in the IPL when he himself, as owner of KKR, had done nothing about it at auction time? Honestly, nobody in their right minds would accuse Shah Rukh of not being patriotic and it is unfair that situations force him to keep reiterating his allegiance to India. If anything, one could only accuse him of suffering from a serious foot-in-the-mouth condition which lands him in such situations!

Bharathi S. Pradhan is editor, The Film Street Journal