Being a typical Nepali, I always feel confused whether to watch (can be read as promote) Hindi movies by going to the theatre or not.

Internet has allowed downloading movies resulting in the choice to go to the theatre spending money or watch movies at home for free. If you are a fan of any particular movie star, then you could feel enticed to go to the theatre even for early shows.

Being a Salman Khan fan, I also sometimes feel obliged to go to movie theatres to watch his films. But I did not watch his last two movies in the movie hall. I watched them in my laptop!

One thing you can notice in Hindi cinemas is they are made with a particular formula. Some special or art cinemas are exceptions to this by the way. But most Bollywood flicks are filled with typical masala and made with the same old formula.

Their popular formula is to put 3/4 songs, 1 item song, tussle between protagonist and antagonist (with or without fight scenes), and the main protagonist (in Bollywood’s case it’s called ‘Hero’) always getting what s/he wants.

And this formula has been taking a lot of money from Nepal as well. Bollywood movies starring Khans gross millions of rupees from the theatres across our country.

This is a very serious challenge to our Nepali film industry. It will be incomplete if I don’t mention some good signs that our own films are showing. The recently released Chhakka Panjaa has been slamming all the previous box office records set by Nepali cinema.

Dipak Raj Giri, producer of the movie, wrote in the social media that multiplex theatres are allotting much more shows for their film than Hindi and English ones.

In fact, there are some new set of people in our industry who are making quality movies. And the good part is the Nepali audience are supporting them very well by going to the theatres to watch Nepali films.

Recently I watched a Bollywood flick Rustom of Akshay Kumar. Similar to the Bollywood masala, his movies, these days, are also bound by some formula.

More of a patriotic flavour, a policeman or an army man, and a very devoted intelligence agent are his frequently repeated role. It is strange he somehow manages to make big hits, which - in their terms - is defined by ‘hundred crore club’.

What I admire and respect about him the most is his ascent to the super stardom without any relatives in the industry.

His struggles to become a karate player and coach is really inspiring.