Om Shanti Om, on the other hand, has Shah Rukh. And nothing, not even a Hollywood studio’s might is bigger than Shah Rukh Khan on his home turf. This is Farah Khan’s second venture after the super-hit Main Hoon Na, and again, she mines the 70s, her favourite “filmy” period, for the first half: by now everyone knows that Shah Rukh plays a double role — a 70s film extra, complete with bell-bottoms and flared collars, and a current superhero, who has, yes, the sexiest body in Bollywood.

How many times in the past few weeks have you been greeted by the sight of a shirt-less Shah Rukh flaunting his six packs? (Those are just boring old abdominal muscles, but a six-pack sounds so much better? ) Even grandmothers who have had no connection with gyms and personal trainers now know the intimate details of how Shah Rukh, leading man and producer of Om Shanti Om, developed such a “fabulous physique” at well over forty: a fortnight ago, a Sunday supplement devoted its cover to the sudden outbreak of six packs amongst the forty-plus Bollywood stars, and to telling us everything we never wanted to know about their dietary restrictions and the strict regimes charted out by their personal trainers, big stars in their own right. Details about Saawariya’s considerably younger star Sonam’s drastic weight-loss (40 kgs, omigosh) before “Sanjay Sir” gave her the nod are, of course, old hat including the fact that “he never once threw a cell-phone at Ranbir and Sonam.” Imagine that.

The past week has also seen a barrage of “a never before in Bollywood” which belongs to Om Shanti Om: 31 leading stars in one song! Preity! Rani! Priyanka! Salman!! Stars put aside their rivalry to come together on one platform! By the time the film releases, the song will be coming out of our ears, as well as the sight of Shah Rukh smirking amongst a bevy of beauties and hunks, but who cares, as long as there are mile-long queues on release day?

Proponents of the three-P machine — packaging, publicity, promotion — believe that there is no other way to open huge and run big, which is why all the big studios go on overdrive in the run-up to their movie’s release.

And the big daddy of them all — Yashraj, is the only Indian studio which understands just how to get it on. Says a rival studio executive with reluctant admiration: “Have you noticed how on all the radio channels the first song to be played is always from the movie, every single day? They really know how to carpet-bomb.”

It may not have been a 100 per cent year for Yashraj, given the average showing of Tara Rum Pum, the less-than-average performance of Jhoom Barabar Jhoom, and the moderate run of its latest Lagaa Chunari Mein Daag, but the superhit status of Chak De has made up for everything : the Chak De song, showing the hockey girls and their bearded coach, started running alongside main features in theatres more than a month of its release (the song, just a promotional tool, wasn’t in the film). The rest of it followed, and as one industry old-timer put it: “aur sab filmon ko kha gayi” (it ate up everything else in sight).

Last Sunday, at the Twenty-20 India-Australia cricket hoopla, part of the spectator excitement, apart from the superlative performance of Gautam Gambhir, was the presence of Shah Rukh and his Om Shanti Om co-star Deepika Padukone. Sharp move, just a fortnight ahead of the big Friday. Shah Rukh’s wife Gauri, also by his side, got short shrift by all the agog camerapersons who made sure we got a close-up everytime Shah Rukh leaned across to say something to Deepika.

So which one will you see first, Om Shanti Om or Saawariya?

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