There were warning bells for 'Dhobi Ghat' on the first day of the release as well. While it was a known fact that this Aamir Khan film was an art house product, reactions from followers of such cinema pretty much indicated that even amongst them, the film hadn't quite found much patronage coming it's way. The cracks had started showing over the weekend but one still felt that the film would somehow manage to chug along into it's second weekend at the least. However what happened was truly shocking and unlike what one predicted last week as the weekdays showed a constant decline for this Kiran Rao directed film.

This is pretty much apparent from the fact that after a 9 crore weekend, the film's first week ended at a mere 13 crores despite a Republic Day holiday in between. To add insult to the injury, the film was totally ignored over the second weekend with 'Dil Toh Baccha Hai Ji' being the clear choice of the audience and 'Yamla Pagla Deewana' continuing to do well in it's third week.

Though it was mentioned in this column that the film would end up around the 20 crores and hence turn out to be an above- average fare, it is impossible now with collections not expected to go anywhere beyond 17 crores. This would mean that now the film would end up being a disappointment in the eyes of 'aam junta' though in trade parlance, it would still be an average success due to its shoe string budget.

At the end of the day, the film has just turned out to be an experiment that Aamir wanted to get involved with though for the industry, it has been a no-win-no-loss situation. The sole beneficiary from this film would be Prateik Babbar who can find some good films coming his way. However for Kiran Rao, one wonders if there would be outside producers queuing up in front of her office. At her end though, one wonders if she was anyways aiming for that to begin with!

As for the other release of the week, 'Hostel', it is a complete wash out and a disaster at the box office with no one really wiping away tears in it's memory.