Hindi cinema fans can look forward to some exciting fare dished out by a clutch of emerging new directors in Bollywood.

Sourabh Usha Narang, who directed this week's release "Vaastu Shastra" promises to ring in change after the abysmal dearth of talent that the year has so far seen.

Narang is the latest among Ram Gopal Varma's protégées. Though earlier in the year Shimit Amin in "Ab Tak Chhappan" and Sriram Raghavan in "Ek Hasina Thi" got good reviews, a wider public acceptance seems to elude the new crop of Varma protégés by a wide margin.

"Vaastu Shastra" which has opened to encouraging reviews and a sizeable crowd of viewers seems to have given audiences a new hope for the reversal of directorial dereliction this year.

Narang was busy Friday anxiously cruising the theatres in Mumbai to get audiences' reaction.

The verdict about Narang is clear: he's being labelled one of the most interesting directors of the year.

"Right now I'm in a state of incredulity," says Narang.

Narang is just the beginning. There's more where he has come from.

Vinta Nanda who has spent a large part of her career creating successful soaps on television is ready with her first feature film.

"'White Noise' is partly based on my own experiences," says Nanda who could be the second interesting female debutante director of the year after Farah Khan whose "Main Hoon Na" created ripples at the box-office earlier this year.

Before the year is through Vinta Nanda will be joined by Leena Bajaj whose "Shabd" is again an intended path breaker.

And now there's scholar-author and 'economics guru' Arindam Chaudhuri ready with his unusual state-of-the-art campus flick "Rok Sako To Rok Lo" as a post-Diwali release.

Chaudhuri's unusual background gives him a kind of detached insight into the workings of Hindi cinema conventions unaffordable to those who have been practising the art of mainstream movie-making for many years.

There are other potentially interesting directors like Anirban whose film "My Brother Nikhil" (on the sensitive issue of AIDS) and Siddhartha Srinivisan's thriller "Amavas" are being looked upon as critics' favourites.