Filmmaker Karan Johar, the most suitable inheritor to the showman sobriquet, paid a fitting tribute to Ghai when he reminisced about his father Yash Johar saying, “When you have queue as long as the one for a Subhash Ghai film outside the theatres, you will know that you are a success.”

Johar perhaps made a point that has been forgotten in the crush of the year– Ghai’s berth in the echelons of show-business. Though his recent movies have had a poor showing, he’s more than made up for it by active expansion on the business front. Mukta Arts has its finger in the regional movie pie. Whistling Woods International, an academy for aspiring filmmakers and technicians, is not doing too badly with 350 students on its rolls and then some more. Counted among the few private institutes that provides credible training in the technical aspects of filmmaking, it is likely to go from strength to strength in the coming years. There has also been news of a petition for film cities in different states like Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh, with Ghai spearheading the efforts!

Taal, Ghai’s last hit as a director, was sometime ago but he did follow it up with a few unlikely triumphs as producer (Iqbal, Jogger’s Park). That failure has not stopped him from experimenting with different subjects and style is encouraging. In 2008, he tried to pull off both Black & White with newcomer Anurag Sinha and Yuvvraaj with Salman Khan and Katrina Kaif. What has not changed is his close involvement with script, music, dialogues and, as Rishi Kapoor and Shah Rukh Khan revealed, choreography, which was at one time held in reverence. The filmmaker’s maverick methodology unfortunately has been unable to establish a connect with the contemporary audience.

Ghai, however, is not the only one of his generation who has received a drubbing at the BO. It is perhaps symptomatic of the larger question— whether directors like actors have a shelf-life too? Some of his peers have averted the crisis by passing on the directorial baton to newer, younger directors. Those who still don the hat are grappling with pretty much the same challenges as Ghai. And so far there have been no definitive answers to the existential question.