"Even today the film has 60 to 70 percent bookings on week days. On Sundays and bank holidays, it runs house full," Praveen Vithal Rane, manager of Maratha Mandir, told IANS over the phone from Mumbai.

The single screen theatre runs other movies as well, but the matinee show has been booked for DDLJ for the last 12 years. And Rane says it will continue to be so.

"Why should we discontinue when it is still having 60 to 70 percent booking? It will run for 100 to 150 weeks more," said Rane.

Though the plot was not really different, the packaging worked. The chemistry between the lead pair - Shah Rukh and Kajol went on to make many more hits after this - and the very real depiction of Indian families in England and in Punjab struck a real chord.

What was different was that the two NRI kids who fall in love decide not to rebel but get married only with their parents' blessings.

And audiences lapped up that mix of tradition and modernism given to them by the debutant 23-year-old director - that's just what they would like their children to be, well educated but 'Indian' to the core.