/> Years ago when Prakash Jha dumped Pallavi Joshi to sign Madhuri Dixit for Mrityudand he sent Pallavi flowers and a note to inform the offbeat actress about his movement towards the mainstream.

It has happened before. It will continue to happen. Avant- garde directors abandon their favourite offbeat actors once the turnstiles turn favourably for a filmmaker catapulting him to a league where saleable stars are easily available to him.

It happened with Ketan Mehta who disregarded his favourite actor Naseeruddin Shah to announce Mangal Pandey with Amitabh Bachchan in the lead to finally make it with Aamir Khan. And even after making such clutter- breaking neo-realistic dramas like Aakrosh and Ardha Satya with Om Puri, Govind Nihalani chose to cast the Big B in the main role and Om Puri in a supporting role in Dev, leaving Om fuming about the betrayal.

Now the latest neo-realistic actor to be hit where it hurts the most is Shreyas Talpade.

After Iqbal and Dor Shreyas and his director Nagesh Kukunoor seemed to have formed an actor-director team as productive as Naseer-Ketan and Om-Govind.

Then came the frisky fiasco Bombay To Bangkok ...and suddenly Shreyas doesn't figure in any of Nagesh's new projects.

The ready-for-release Aashayein features John Abraham and Tasveer stars Akshay Kumar.

Surprisingly the start-to-finish quickie that Nagesh is currently shooting in Jodhpur also doesn't feature Shreyas.

Shreyas tries to reason out his disappointment. "I'm told there's no role suited to me in any of these films. I trust Nagesh completely and I'm sure he'll cast me again as soon as there's a role for me in one of his films.

After all we've done three films together, " Shreyas laughs, unable to hide his unstated disappointment at being kept out of his favourite director's new films.

Could the breach have occurred because of the miserable critical and commercial failure of their last film together?

"No one sets out to make a bad film, " reasons Shreyas. "When we did Bombay To Bangkok we had fun and thought it audiences will enjoy it. They didn't. We sincerely gave the caper a best shot."

Strangely after not signing him for the two biggies Nagesh hasn't signed Shreyas for his current quickie either.

Laughs Shreyas, "I've wondered why I'm not working with Nagesh. I hope we work soon. Iqbal was a turning point in my career.

After that when I was wondering what to do next Nagesh gave me another challenging role in Dor. Maybe he needs to work with actors, as I need to work with other directors. I've just done Welcome To Sajjanpur with Shyam Benegal and I'm sure Nagesh is very happy for me."

One sure hopes to see this productive actor-director team together again in the near future.