Cheer ‘Pathaan’s success, but don’t forget failures: Today as Siddharth Anand, director of the blockbuster ‘Pathaan’, says he wants to make many spectacles, of the cinematic type, fans of Bollywood around the world would be cheering him. The Shah Rukh Khan, Deepika Padukone-starrer is eclipsing one record after another in Indian box office history, and deservedly so. But that seemed unattainable as not long ago, a lot of people were writing the epitaph for this film industry, among India’s largest. It was bogged down by failures or tepid showings of movies starring big actors, and only a few lesser known films tasted success. Yes, viewer preferences have undergone a tectonic shift in India, thanks to the Coronavirus pandemic, when they were exposed to better crafted movies from other regions, notably the south. The Hindi film industry must laud ‘Pathaan’s success, but importantly it must also reflect on what went wrong in the intervening years. That would provide it a buffer against failures. (By Rajagopalan Venkataraman, Assistant Editor-Features)