And they lived happily ever after..... Did they?

ZUBEIDAA: (Odeon, Chanakya: Delhi): GIRL MEETS boy. Girl gets boy. End of a long, long fairy tale? Well, not if you live in a childhood of your socialism. Not if you are a Shyam Benegal. Then there would be, like a French pastry, just layers and layers of icing, history, cream, geography, dialectics of emotion, all thickly laid so that when you sink in it your young hungry teeth, it melts like a piece of Black Forest or some Swiss delight, leaving enough time for you to mumble: Thank you, Uncle Benegal, for catching up with the times, thank you for going global.

And there he goes again, marrying off another of his Muslim girls to another of his Hindu boys. Meet Khalid Mohamed, cinema writer by compulsion, cinema critic by profession, cinema director by design, and a part-time Muslim by biological accident, madly working away for his Indian nirvana and to rid himself of an ancestral guilt buried deep in his subliminal twilight. He would not be the first or the last Akbar The Great, looking into the bedroom for secular territories lost in the battlefield. There is a whole line of Moghul Kings leading us to Jinnah.

That brings us to the most watchable moments of Zubiedaa, the pernicious two-nation theory, once an abstraction, now at work at a micro level, tearing a family apart distorting the equilibrium of an ancient civil society, the cradle of human tolerance. Sulaiman Seth, a studio owner and film-maker, embraces a member of his faith, a long-lost friend, when he returns from Pakistan to resume his life in India which he had interrupted while answering the call of Jinnah.

He marries off his only daughter to the friend's son who takes up a job in a Bombay hospital. Little does he know he is courting disaster, for the friend and son soon repatriate themselves to Pakistan, leaving Sulaiman Seth and his divorced daughter with a new-born son and some loose ends of a troublesome emotional life.

From Mammo to Sardari Begum to Hari Bhari and now Zubeidaa, Shyam Benegal shows a remarkable range and astonishing depth of understanding a Muslim family's turbulent life. He never misses a telling detail, be it a forced nikaah or a shattering talaaq (divorce). He also uses music to accentuate the ambience and reflect the moral and emotional crises of his characters.

As is his wont, Benegal never allows anything to grow larger than life and despite a compromise here and there for the box office, Zubeidaa sustains an aura of realism. You seem to be watching real people reacting to each other in authentic human situations. That is why Benegal may find few takers for Manoj Bajpai's Rajasthani Prince Charming who can bowl over Mumbai maidens like Karisma Kapoor (Zubeidaa). Not that he is a poor actor. In fact he is as good an actor as they come, but royal graces do not sit easily on his countenance.

On the contrary, Rekha might just have been born to play Badi Rani, the repository of a royal heritage and the consort worthy of an Emperor. She makes life difficult for Karisma playing the title role in a women-oriented story.

After Fiza and now Zubeidaa, if Karisma is not too careful she might end up winning the "Sitare-e-Imtiyaz" of Pakistan for being the best Muslim girl on the silver screen.

Surekha Sikri is never second rate. Neither is Amrish Puri. An outstanding feature of this film is its haunting music by A.R. Rahman. Zubeidaa ends up giving us a better perception of contemporary Indian life which is a commendable achievement and the right message to mark a Happy New Year.

KUCH KHATTI KUCH MEETHI: (Delite, PVR Anupam, Priya and other Delhi theatres): There now is our Kajol in double trouble. No, not again. Wasn't she in that situation in Dushman in which that horror man Ashutosh Rana sent one chill a minute down your spine? Well, well, one presumed that for an actress like Kajol, always glowing, always radiant, once is not enough. So here you have one Khatti Kajol and one Meethi Kajol, like some sweet -- and sour Chinese delight.

If Hollywood could market some instant philosophy in "The Parent Trap" about estranged parents, a common sight in the West, not being a joy forever for their children, Bollywood could not be far behind. After all, globalisation is a great leveller. We are already a super power as far as state-of-the art information technology is concerned. So we cannot have these old notions like one marriage being good for seven incarnations hanging around our over neck like an albatross.

My only complaint is that Indian billionaires turn into the idiot of the family once they enter their houses. Look at Rishi Kapoor. The guy perpetually lives in an alcoholic stupor which completely clouds his vision. The guy who is supposed to eat millionaires for breakfast lunch and dinner turns into a complete nut when it comes to handling his domestic affairs. As a result, he loses one of his daughters and his wife to live in perpetual misery.

Of course, you guessed it. The twins shall meet and lay a trap for their seasoned Ma and Pa. Two old troupers, the seasoned Rishi Kapoor and comeback star Rati Agnihotri, provide some scintillating passages in a Kajol-dominated film. Sunil Shetty hangs around like a loose end. Rahul Rawail handles with skill both the high-key emotions and the low-key lighter moments. Anu Malik provides hummable tunes, if you can remember them after leaving the theatre.

The film in the end is what the name suggests: a bit of this and a bit of that.

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