NOW: Hrithik Roshan and Barbara Mori meet a few hand-picked children at INOX (City Centre) on Monday. (Aranya Sen)

Entry tweet: “Kolkata. Strange affection for this place. Must b d Bengali blood in me. I used to call her ‘Dida’. She d’dnt speak English, wonder if she’d b proud of Kites...”

Exit tweet: “Leaving Kolkata, felt so much love from this city. Being here feels like a long warm hug.:) happy smiles all around...taking off!”

These two status updates from Hrithik Roshan on his @iHrithik Twitter account don’t tell the story of his brief Calcutta visit on Monday, just like the promos of Kites didn’t give a hint of the 126-minute yawn show that hit halls on Friday.

The disappointment over the much-hyped release seemed to taint the city’s response to Hrithik Roshan which wasn’t a patch on the frenzied ovation he had received a decade back on his first trip to the city of his grandmother post-Kaho Naa… Pyaar Hai. In April 2000, Park Street had gone into a tizzy as the dashing debutant stormed MusicWorld and Tantra.

On Monday, as Hrithik made his way through the gates of City Centre (Salt Lake) on to a hastily laid out narrow red carpet at 11am, barely a couple of hundred were there to catch a glimpse of their hero.

Then: Hrithik Roshan wades through a sea of fans on Park Street in April 2000. Telegraph picture

When Metro quizzed Hrithik, handsome in a gingham checked shirt and jeans, whether the craze seemed to have ebbed, he smiled: “Even if I am alone in my room in Calcutta, I feel good.”

If the Hrithik reception was lukewarm, Calcutta was quite cold to the Mexican hottie and Kites leading lady Barbara Mori. She looked radiant in a pale blue shirtwaister with a trinket chain around her neck and a orchid stuck to her hair. But hardly anyone was looking.

Once inside the INOX multiplex, Hrithik defended his latest home production, whose negative word-of-mouth publicity has clearly reached the Roshans.

“I am an artiste. I have to explore. I have to do different things,” was the justification for Kites. “Some will resist change, some will accept change but we are all proud of the film.”

The ‘we’ included director Anurag Basu and producer-father Rakesh Roshan, who flanked the lead pair of the film that has reportedly been sold for Rs 105 crore to Reliance BIG Pictures.

Drawing an analogy with food, Bollywood’s obsession with Calcutta, Hrithik called Kites “pasta”.

“So while you very much like your Indian food at home, you can try something different some times,” he elaborated. “If you like watching films, watch Kites. If you like food, try pasta.”

While the first weekend of Kites was expectedly huge because of the hype and the number of shows, the Friday figures actually dipped on Saturday and didn’t bounce on Sunday. Plex sources admitted that the Monday drop has been “alarming”.

Hrithik himself didn’t help matters. In that one hour that he was at INOX (City Centre), the star managed to wean away a few of those who were braving the film. Most of the Kites crowd at the two audis left the film midway and hopped over for some stargazing. Clearly, this show was far more entertaining.