The first quarter is up, and the report for Bollywood, box-office wise, is bleak. That's the bad news. But there is some good news too. More 'different' films have come out of Mumbai in the last three months than in the past year; filmmakers are finally risking commercial certainty in order to create stories that don't taste and smell the same.

"Guru has been the only certified big hit," says long-time exhibitor Rajesh Khanna, "and that was out back in the first week of January." Mani Ratnam's thinly disguised Rs 36-crore tale on the rise and rise of Dhirubhai Ambani played for about six weeks in most theatres with "good occupancy".

The film dispelled a couple of myths; that Abhishek and Aishwarya couldn't give a hit together (Umrao Jaan was one of 2006's biggest flops), and that Mani Ratnam could only enthuse the North Indian market with his Tamil-dubbed-in-Hindi films (his first Hindi film Yuva was a flop, too). It was also Abhishek Bachchan's first solo hit, proving that he is capable of carrying a film on his own.

It helped of course, that Bachchan Jr's romance with the light-eyed beauty culminated in an engagement around that time. Cynics were quick to claim that the 'Abhi-Ash' tamasha was timed to help the movie.

Whatever, Guru's strong storyline, and Abhishek's solid performance as Guru/Dhirubhai, hit the spot.