Om Shanti Om is apparently reviving that other old chestnut of Hindi film plots: reincarnation. Reincarnation has been neglected now for several years as deluded directors searched for more contemporary themes like alienated youth, terrorism, gender equality, Gandhiji’s relevance in our times, and Shakespeare. And to the born-again plot device has been added the usual pleasant twist. The first Shah Rukh is a struggling actor in the Hindi film industry in the seventies, in love with megastar Deepika Padukone, so everyone gets to wear cool retro ’70s hairstyles and bellbottoms; and the second Shah Rukh is a megastar in the here and now. It’s basically a remake of Subhash Ghai’s Karz, which was plagiarised from the minor Hollywood film The Reincarnation of Peter Proud. No shadow or suspicion of an original idea would be entertained by the men and women who have wrought Om Shanti Om. Even the notion of the 31-film-star song sequence being uber-hyped on television is stolen from Manmohan Desai’s Naseeb.

But Saawariya should be quite a different kettle of fish. Little is known about the story, except that it has a Muslim angle, and that, as far as sets go, Bhansali has gone way over the top again. This man is an extremist on a grand scale. In his Devdas, a story essentially about a man’s mind was turned into a thesis on how crass interior décor can be if you have enough money to throw at it. With actors panting under jewellery the weight of ingots, every colour making you reach for your sunglasses, every scene a crescendo that Pavarotti would have baulked at, Devdas was so harrowing an experience that I fled for my life within fifteen minutes. And I was only watching it on DVD.

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