The Cat who stole Kat's cream

Ranbir Kapoor took the Kat over a cool Cat, clearly. Deepika Padukone's Piku snuck in like a feline who broke in via the side window someone left open and stole the box office with an opening weekend collection of Rs 38 cr. It proved unstoppable with a second weekend of Rs 55 cr decimating the much larger release of Bombay Velvet's Rs 16.25 cr over the first weekend.

The best revenge they say, is to live well. And this has been the mother of all revenges. It's the old-fashioned 4 hour film cut to 2 hr 29 min running time - everything Ranbir Kapoor and his pedigree stands for - to the cute minion upstart with a 2 hour 5 mins running time - aka Deepika Padukone.

It's new money vs the established hands. It's big vs small, it's classic male protagonist vs classic feminist protagonist. It's old people and their untenable digestive tract issues vs the beauty of youth in a glossy age, multi-crore set glamour. It's a bombastic pulsating score vs the under-your-breath unstylised humming-in-the-car. It's period costume vs home clothes and cotton kurtas and shabby hair vs perfectly coiffed. But most of all, it's the battle of the exes. It's Deepika Padukone, she who was once accused of chasing the Kapoor name as addendum to her own vs Ranbir, he who picked the other Kat. It's the woman who stands on her own taking that man who left her standing there down. Oh so down.

Katrina couldn't have picked a worse time to walk down the red carpet, dressed as... um... a red carpet.

The Cat clearly got the cream this time. Purrr...