Not only are formula films unsure of their fates but even superstars don't seem to be drawing crowds. Check out the cult-status of Hrithik Roshan…the darling of the classes, masses and the media. After the runaway success of Kaho Na Pyar Hai, Roshan is now struggling for a hit. Doubtlessly a good performer, it's not for the lack of backing or banners (Yash Chopra, Subhash Ghai) that he is floundering. It's simply that the audiences are not buying the "same old stuff" any more, especially not when there is more on offer in the market. Ditto is the case with Kareena Kapoor— the beautiful, talented, glamorous daughter of the Kapoor clan... "All that is all right", seem to say the half-empty picture halls, "but what's new?"

Let's take a look at filmmakers. There hasn't been a sure-shot hit from Bollywood this year except Devdas. Another hit was the dark horse Raaz and that because it was a 'different' story…at least to Hindi filmdom, though insiders say that it is a direct lift from the Harrison Ford starrer, What Lies Beneath. The other hit of the year has been the much-in-news Ek Chothi Si Love Story and anyone who follows the news knows the reason for that chhoti si success story.

So if Yash Chopra with his Mujh se Dosti Karoge, Hrithik and Govinda starrers, or Dharmendra's 'epic' with both his star sons can't take viewers to the cinema halls, then what can? If we take only this year, we need to check out Bend It Like Beckham, Everybody says I'm Fine and American Desi—three films in approximately 10 months. Running alongside the Bollywood butter chicken masala fare, these films, (like specialised cuisine— Italian, Mexican?) have made a place in the market and found takers. Thumbing a snook at the Bollywood Mughal, filmmakers like Kuknoor, Rahul Bose and Mira Nair have stubbornly stuck it out and insisted upon displaying their sensibilities and concerns to the public. That the public, or at least a section of it shares their concerns, which are frequently treated with an engaging irreverence by these filmmakers, has resulted in creating a niche market for them.

This niche market is a more narrowly defined group than a mass market, a small market whose needs so far haven't ‘been well served.’ These films have deliberately veered away from the one-size-fits-all marketing strategy that has so far been prevalent in Bollywood. As in other industries where mass marketing is dying and niches being increasingly catered to, in filmdom also, which is a multi-crore industry in India, movies serving a small group that identifies with the issues and milieus brought forth by the Indian-English films were bound to come up sooner or later.

That the socio-cultural scene undergoes radical changes which are visible every decade, is an undeniable fact. Such changes are manifested through books, films and multimedia. When there has been such a revolution in the literary scene where Indians have marked their space in English writing, how could films be far behind? The fact that these films sell more in English than when dubbed in Hindi also strengthens their niche-character. Other notable films over the past three decades have been Salaam Bombay, Mira Nair’s forerunner to her immensely popular Monsoon Wedding and Gurinder Chadha’s Bhaji on the Beach—both filmmakers made it to the forefront and limelight many years thereafter with their hot selling films. Other notable films, though few and far between, were Mississippi Masala and Khushwant Singh’s Train to Pakistan which aroused the interest of the Indian intelligentsia.

Post-Independence, there has been a migration of Indians to overseas soils. Many of the filmmakers of the new genre are either those who went to study abroad and then settled there (Mira Nair) or offsprings of the settlers there.

They keep in touch with their Indian roots but are sufficiently far removed to see the ludicrousness and hypocrisy of many Indian situations and thus the irreverence, but irreverence without angst. Others like Nagesh Kuknoor and Rahul Bose are sophisticated and urbane enough observers of both Indian and western cultures to be able to portray them in their films. In another category of the class are those filmmakers who hail from the metros, are familiar with the urban, English-speaking class mainly from nuclear families and who can step aside from the usual Bollywood themes to take a look at the class that they belong to. Farhan Akhtar would fit into this mould. Although his Dil Chahta Hai doesn't strictly fit into the category of films under consideration but its setting was such that it spawned a number of 'me-too', films in the mainstream as well as the niche.

Before the English filmmaking became a wave, there were occasional outbreaks of such movies. Perhaps, Sidhartha by Conrad Rooks was the first film to hit the halls. Sidhartha dealt with the spiritual journey of the protagonist but made major news for the nude scene by Simi Garewal and due to the fact that it was one of the first English productions dealing with an Indian backdrop. The producers James Ivory and Ismail Merchant were consistent in producing films based on books by Ruth Prawer Jhabwala and the Indian and foreign movie halls saw films like Heat and Dust, The Householder and Shakespearwala to name a few. Merchant had his regulars like Shashi Kapoor and Geoffery Kendall among his cast and he aroused the interest of the world film-watchers, at least a section of them, in the Indian cultural scene depicted by movies. The forerunner of Indian filmmakers making films in English and through them addressing relevant socio-cultural concerns was Aparna Sen's 36, Chowringhee Lane. Jennifer Kapoor in her unforgettable performance that almost won her the National Award that year (Rekha finally got it for Umrao Jaan) depicted an old Anglo-Indian teacher of English in Calcutta, a spinster with no family who was pathetically pleased when an old student and her boyfriend befriend her. Sen's cinema was the heartbreaking picturisation of the Anglo-Indian community of Calcutta and remains till date, the best movie made on that section of society.

The next significant movie in this genre was the picturisation of Upmanyu Chatterjee's book, English August which dealt with a young, urban IAS officer whose first posting is at a far-flung casbah. Unfamiliar with his surroundings, bored without the usual town entertainments and out of sync with the small town attitudes, Rahul Bose's performance as the wide-eyed officer trying to cope with small-town babudom got him and the film critical acclaim in India and in the various international film festivals where it was screened.

One person who has consistently stuck to his guns and developed the genre over the past decade or so, is Nagesh Kuknoor, the advertising-executive-turned-filmmaker. He kicked off his career with Hyderabad Blues where he played the NRI who returns home to a south Indian town and has to deal with an arranged marriage. Although it is to a girl whom he knows and likes, he simply cannot come to terms with the basic concept of it. Though happy to be back home, there are incongruities in the system that are glaringly visible to a gaze that has now been exposed to a seemingly simpler culture. Kuknoor's Rockford was the story of a boys' school and hostel located in a hill town. The film proved to be a delightful depiction of the lives of the boys who go to hostel and have to deal with the completely new lifestyle, discipline, friends, enemies, ragging, bonding, teachers and situations. Kuknoor himself played the sympathetic sports teacher who eventually comes under a cloud but a huge chunk of the film was left to the school boys, making it a movie that a lot of hostellers, present and past, could relate to. Last year, Kuknoor came out with his hilarious Bollywood Calling which was about a one-flick-hit American actor who is offered a role in a B-grade Bollywood masala pot-boiler and his experiences thereof. Om Puri plays the producer of the film and delivers another wonderful performance. The American actor, though bewildered and annoyed at first at the unprofessionalism of Indian filmmaking, finally resigns himself to working at the same pace and style.

Kuknoor's contributions to the genre have been large and varied. Around the same time another film about three young Indian men from different parts of the world who come to Bombay, each with a different purpose was also released. Bombay Boys had such veterans as Naseeruddin Shah and Tara Deshpande playing cameo roles and dealt with the situations, often inexplicable, that the three boys land into.

The one film that gave a major fillip to the movement (if it can be called that) was Mira Nair's Monsoon Wedding. The film is a path-breaking one insofar as its depth and appeal goes. Not only was it a box-office success but also the winner of The Golden Palm Award and in the running for the Indian film nomination for the Oscars, which Lagaan finally got. The film took a hard look at the problem of child sexual abuse in an affluent urban family and reaffirmed strong family values and bonds. Nair tested the fibre of the Indian family and did not find it wanting. Superb performances and a strong storyline created a movie that was able to straddle both audiences—mainstream and niche.

The hit of the year was the much-talked-about film by Gurinder Chadha, Bend It Like Beckham which dealt with an Indian family settled in Britain. A background of conservative parents and their England-born-and-bred daughter presented the clash between the cultural divide between the immigrant parents and their first-generation-citizen offspring. The unrealistic expectations of the parents shocked by their daughter's foreign and tomboyish ways resulted in a delighted audience chorusing football shutball hai rabba with the mother who'd rather that her daughter learnt to cook dal and aloo gobi rather than play football.

This year also saw Rahul Bose's Everybody Says I'm Fine. Set in a hairdressing salon, the movie was about the hairdresser Xen, who could look into the minds of his clients who said that they were fine although they were anything but. Bose's film had an interesting surmise and found watchers in the niche. The third movie of the year, currently showing, is American Desi. This movie deals with the America Born Confused Desi, or the class of American citizens of Indian origins who are born to traditional Indians settled abroad. Uncomfortable with their compatriots, whom they find too effusive. They are also too conservative, too 'Indian' to shake off their cultural roots. These kids float around in a limbo of rootlessness till they forge an identity. The setting of the film is an American college hostel, where the hero, the 'reluctant Indian' finds himself sharing a room with three other Indian boys and thus the director creates a microcosm of India in an alien culture and also shows the way to become comfortable with one's cultural identity.

These are the films that have been in the limelight but there are other films being made that haven't been released in picture-halls but have found an audience, a sort of niche within a niche. Notable among these was Harvard-returned filmmaker, late Nishit Saran's Summer In My Veins which dealt with his own homosexuality.

There have been many other films in the past few years and many others in the pipeline. A new sensibility of pragmatism and robust humour, while addressing real issues and concerns that is quite separate from the usual tear jerking, candy-floss fare, is coming about. Family, love and traditions are being dealt with and therefore, the essentials are not forgotten, but they are all being given a fresh new treatment. The important effect of these films is that now there are movies being made by Indian filmmakers in the same genre but in Hindi, thus broadening the base of the niche. The only thing that needs to be watched out for is that stereotypes are not created.