The K-word

it's the dreaded k-word again. first it struck television. every soap began with it: kyonki saas bhi kabhi bahu thi, kahani ghar ghar ki, koshish ek asha, kundali kasauti zindagi kay.. right up to that stuttering marvel kkusum, which you'll agree takes the kake (it's katching). it got so bad that people began to believe that tv's most successful producer and her company had changed their names to kekta kapoor and kalaji kelefilms.but kapoor says that the k word isn't her idea. it came from rakesh roshan, her dad's best friend, hrithik roshan's best dad and a director of kalaji kelefilms. he has produced during a long career, khoon bhari maang, kala bazaar, kishan kanhaiya, khel, karan arjun, koyla, kaho naa pyaar hai and many more such. even his production house is called film kraft. but there's a producer called arjun hingorani who goes one better. a partial list of his film includes kaun kahre kurbani, kahani kismat ki, kab? kyon? aur kahan? in his next movie he plans to use singer krishna kumar, better known as kk, and the actor, better known for his name than his acting, because his name is kay kay. co-starring will be karishma kapoor and kareena kapoor. however, when the ekta kapoor produced movie kyonki mein jhooth nahin bolta flopped, the world heaved a sigh of relief. here, at last, was a respite. here, at long last, a chance for the other 25 letters of the alphabet to assert themselves. when along came karan johar and k3g. unless you have been on a space mission, you will know that k3g, so named to save newsprint, is a monster hit. you will also have heard that the precocious karan's first film, made soon after he uttered his first word (which, incidentally, was 'kaka' as soon as he saw his papa), was called kuch kuch hota hai. karan is itching just itching , to make the sequel, kitch kitch hoti hai. enough levity. the success of kabhi khushi kabhie gham is serious (you don't fool around with returns of rs 10 million in the first week.) the film industry's obsession with numerology and its all pervasive superstitions may make it seem gullible, but there's nothing credulous about its single-minded pursuit of the e word, entertainment. johar is from a younger generation which is smart and savvy, but he is only one of many directors, producers and actors-turned-producers (shah rukh khan, aamir khan), who have added to the cinema in their blood (from parents, grand-parents, even great grand-parents), a bright education and a hungry ability to absorb from international (especially hollywood) movies. they, therefore, have a firmer grasp of cinema, a finer sense of its aesthetics and an ability to impart a dazzling surface gloss without losing sight of the substance. they also know their audience, all of which makes for a heady combination. but this picture isn't perfect. more of that in a minute. contrast the young mainstream film maker's sureness of touch with the young parallel film maker's complete loss of it. a report in the times of india last week quoted directors of various foreign film festivals; they had come here to preview films to take back with them. each delegate, without exception, expressed a sense of acute disappointment. they found no change in this cinema: for twenty years, maybe even forty years, there wasn't a change in style. whether it was in pacing, or framing, or choice of themes or story-telling, there was a stasis, as if everything had been frozen in time. india, the country wasn't the same, its concerns were different, its visual and sensory inputs were transformed, even its energy had changed directions, but parallel cinema stood rooted in an earlier era. no wonder its audiences, even its small audiences, disappeared. but, as we were saying, the picture isn't perfect on the other side either. that's because mainstream cinema, even in the bright, young films of its bright, young directors, suffers from a lack of ambition. the present generation may have outdone the previous one, but it hasn't tried to outdo it in what it wants to do. the k-letter generation is stuck at the same e-letter as before. but there is cinema beyond entertainment. hollywood, in at least half a dozen films a year, has shown that for decades. it's a lesson worth learning and for today's fast learners, a lesson to learn quickly. bombaytimes@timesgroup.com