Throughout the decades marked by periods of hostility, resurgence of placid relationship and blame games, people from both the sides of the border dividing India and Pakistan have loved and welcomed musicians with open arms whenever circumstances allowed them to do it.

The same goes with the films also. But in this case the people of Pakistan depends a lot on Bollywood for their diet of cinematic entertainment as their domestic industry is more or less non existent and is nowhere near to the heights of excellence conquered by the Hindi film Industry.

Till 1997 when the peace process and the subsequent decisions of opening up both the countries with more trade and people to people meetings was put into effect, the Hindi films could not be exhibited in Pakistan because of a 42 year old ban.

So till this time the greatest beneficiaries of the ban were the film pirates and the numerous video shops all over Pakistan where the videos of the B-town movies were as popular and wanted as in India.

The defunct cinema halls got a new lease of life with the lifting up of the ban and regular shows began to be screened in old theatres as well as new plush film exhibition centres came up in big cities like Karachi, Islamabad, Lahore etc..

Now with the reemergence of the tension between the two countries after the Mumbai terror attacks, it seems that situation is going back as it was years ago.

New Bollywood films have not got released in Pakistan and this has left the film distributors, theatre owners and exhibitors tensed and worried.

The people in the film business as well as the film lovers were waiting eagerly for the release of Shah Rukh Khan's 'Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi' and Aamir Khan's 'Ghajini' but the Culture Ministry of Pakistan has still not cleared any new film from India.

Till now no official message has been conveyed ordering the exhibitors to completely stop showing the B-Town movies.

So to keep up the business, the theatre owners are screening old hit films that had already got released months back.