As we brace ourselves for the double bonanza from Priyadarshan this Diwali, it becomes increasingly apparent that the prolific and constantly meritorious Priyan isn't in a specially original mood this festive season.

Priyan's first Diwali release Garam Masala reprises his 1985 Malyalam comedy Boeing Boeing. Even as he remakes yet another Malayalam film with Shahid kapoor and Kareena Kapoor in Chennai (about a man who's washed ashore in a fishing village and is nursed back to health by a deaf-and-mute girl) Priyan has a surprise for fans of that underrated celluloid maestro Asit Sen's fans.

Contrary to the hype the much-publicized Salman-Kareena starrer Kyun Ki... has scant bearing to Milos Foreman's One Flew over The Cuckoo's Nest.

The film is actually a remake of Sen's sensitive and stirring 1969 psychological drama Khamoshi in which the traumatized patient Rajesh Khanna was healed back by nurse Waheeda Rehman who in the process of healing the hero falls sick with love.

Interestingly Asit Sen had remade this highly acclaimed Hindi film from his own 1959 Bengali classic Deep Jweley Jai where Uttam Kumar and Suchitra Sen had played the two roles.

Even more interestingly, Priyadarshan has already made this Bengali-Hindi film into Malayalam in 1986. The film in question was Thalavattam . It featured Mohanlal and Karthika as the patient and doctor. It remains to be seen how effectively Salman has portrayed the psychologically challenged man.

Strangely Priyan denies any knowledge of Khamoshi. "I've heard there're uncanny similarities between Kyun Ki... and Khamoshi. I haven't seen that film. But I'm trying my best to get a copy so I can see how two filmmakers from two different regions belonging two different time zones think similarly."

The Hoary History Of Asit Sen's Khamoshi

Asit Sen's Dweep Jaweley Jai in 1959
.....Khamoshi in 1969
Shakti Samanta's Pagla Kahin Ka in 1970
Priyadarshan's Thalavattam(Malayam) in 1986
Priyadarshan's Kyun Ki... in 2005
A Brief On Asit Sen.

A disciple of Bimal Roy he made some of the most memorable and emulated films:
*Mamta(1966) which was remade as Pravin Bhatt's Bhavna and Ambrish Sangal's Dard
*Anokhi Raat(1967) where all the action unfolded within a night, its one-night-stand on the narrative issue was echoed in numerous films thereafter.
*Khamoshi(1969): psycho-drama had echoes in Shakti Samanta's Pagla Kahin Ka...The title of Sanjay Leela Bhansali's Khamoshi: The Musical was a tribute to Sen's film.
* Safar(1970): Rajesh Khanna-Sharmila Tagore love triangle about medical ethics, remarkable for its uncompromising tragic finale where both the heroes die.
* Sharafat(1970)—Underrated drama about the rehabilitation of a prostitute with a brilliant performance by Dharmendra as a professor who brings a tawaif, Hema Malini ,home.
Annadata(1972)—Exceptional humanistic drama about a disillusioned millionaire Om Prakash who leaves home in search of peace and truth.