I could not agree with Deepa Gahlot more. Just a few days ago, after seeing a column by Komal Nahta on this site, Aditya's Love Triumphs, I felt exasperated enough to write what is reproduced below:

"All that this proves, if in fact you can predict what the final outcome of a film's collections will be after just five days, is that the Indian public prefers sentimental mush and platitudes about love to a serious film about a serious, indeed a burning subject.

"It is obviously true that a people get the films they deserve. Aditya Chopra is already cannibalising his own first film and his father's earlier films in Mohabbatein.

"Next time round, after another five years, he will undoubtedly rehash Mohabbatein itself. Maybe that too will be a superhit, and infantilism and cliches will triumph."

As you can see from it, Deepa Gahlot has voiced my own sentiments exactly.

The root cause of all this deterioration is, I feel, twofold.

First, box office success now seems to be the sole criterion for rating any performer or product, a star, an actor (of either gender), or a film.

There is thus this feverish media speculation whether a film will pay off, for the producer, the distributor and the exhibitor. There is an excessive build-up before the film's release, be it Refugee or the Diwali duo.

Reams are written, well in advance, as to who will make chutti of whom. Three days after the release, unless it is a KN...PH or a KKHH, it is damned as a flop and probably turned into one, like a bank on which a run is created by speculation that it is failing.

Under these circumstances, even Sholay, a slow starter, would never have survived.

Every film is touted as something that will 'make' or 'break' someone or the other. So healthy growth and even a little experimentation, free of this miasma that stifles and chokes all growth, becomes very difficult even for an adventurous actor or actress.

A prime example of this is Hrithik Roshan. That his amazingly nuanced performance in Fiza -- the dazed, empty-eyed agony he summons as he stumbles through the riot scene is a revelation, a piece of pure acting that has, sadly, attracted very little detailed attention -- was seen by such a large number of people not because it was superb, especially in such an inexperienced actor, but because he can, after KN...PH, get an 'initial' without the promise of which Fiza would perhaps have been difficult to market.

However, despite Hrithik's 'pull' and the excellent peformances by Karisma Kapoor and Jaya Bachchan, the fact remains that Fiza is not the sort of film that can attract a repeat mass audience.

So it is not going to be a 'hit'. Nor, probably, is Mission Kashmir, if only because it is not a feel-good piece of fluff that, whatever its failings, does tackle a very vital subject and try to bring home to the audience the prolonged agony of Kashmir.

Even the supposedly more sophisticated urban audience, highly reluctant to feel so uncomfortable or even to be made to think, shies away from watching this kind of suffering, never mind if the film is 'made from the heart,' as most reviewers have conceded.

Not even Steven Spielberg could have made a hit of a Saving Private Ryan in India or among our NRIs, not to speak of a Schindler's List.

So we have Hrithik, after having not merely risked but pulled off two such harsh and demanding roles, especially in these days of Deepa Gahlot's ubiquitous 'pink candy floss', now being warned by well-meaning critics like Nikhat Kazmi of the TOI to switch to 'something sunny for a change, sunny boy.'

Not to worry. There will be Subhash Ghai's Yaadein and Karan Johar's Kabhi Khushi Khushi Gham and other sleek packages of sentimental entertainment, good, bad or indifferent. In which Hrithik will do all the things he did so well in KN...PH or variations thereof, so that his huge fan following can be happy again.

This is not to say that this is in any way bad or undesirable. The poor boy needs a break and cannot always be shooting in stinking, filthy water. And then, I too thoroughly enjoyed KN...PH!

One can only hope that somewhere in-between, there are still some filmmakers who do not take the easy way out and market solely what Karl Marx would have called the opiate of the masses.

It is only then that those like Hrithik -- and I have focused on him because he is something out of the common, combining a very high level of star charisma with equally striking acting abilities (that have been demonstrated by the sheer chance of his getting these two films), and even greater potential -- can grow and polish their craft without their stardom being a burden of which they can never be free.

If you are a huge star, the burden is doubly heavy, for it will be left to you to salvage even an indifferent, if not a lousy film, and it is you who will be made to suffer if you do not manage the impossible. And if a really good film of yours fails, which can happen too, you are damned even more.

Soon, your early spirit of adventure is swallowed up by box office considerations and you start playing safe, and you either stagnate or deteriorate.

Ashok Kumar and Dilip Kumar, each a peerless actor in his own way, did not labour under such handicaps. They did their best, and sometimes their films succeeded and sometimes they failed.

But the actors did not fail, they carried on. They were not hobbled by the box office demon, and they did not live or die every Friday.

The second point is the cost factor.

Films are now very expensive, and the domestic market has been sadly eroded by video and cable channel piracy. The music, satellite and overseas rights that yield enough 'table' profits to make the domestic market a negligible factor for the producer work only for a few biggies with major stars.

For the rest, all the disadvantages are there and growing worse, leading to even greater dependence on what is seen as the (elusive) box office formula, which in turn produces worse and worse films, with synthetic stories, emotions, conflicts, and performances.

Then these fail with depressing regularity, like 90% of the releases this year, leading to even more of playing 'safe.'

Where does this all end?

Perhaps there will be the Bollywood equivalent of the 1929 Wall Street crash, leading to a general house cleaning.

This is probably just wishful thinking, so we shall have to settle for cost-cutting, more professional and imaginative distribution channels, small size multiplexes, and arrangements by which cable piracy can be stopped by consent at least for a few months after the film's release, to be followed by early telecast on pay per view channels and, within six months of the theatre release, the video/DVD release, as is now the norm in the US.

With such a framework in place, an Astitva would find its own niche and would not be driven out of the theatres by the next blockbuster, and a film like Jabbar Patel's unreleased, 10- year-old Musafir would have long since seen the light of day.

Bad films might still flop -- alas, often they run, and very well too! But small but good ones succeeding even to a modest extent would not be as rare as it is now.

And it would not be so difficult for a star actor or actress, not to speak of directors, story and screenplay writers -- the whole lot -- to have fun experimenting, and stimulate and entertain us at the same time.

Does it sound Utopian? I hope not.

Shyamala B Cowsik is based in Nicosia, Cyprus