The hall mark of some of the greats in my list:
Ram Gopal Verma:So many versatile subjects, never ever followed the trends of the industry.Shiva, Satya, Company and even the funky Rangeela.He never ceases to experiment, a very rare thing in our industry.
Mani Ratnam:Technical brilliance is the strong point of his movies.Roja and Bombay are the best he is rememberd for, but heard he has some amazing movies to his credit in Tamil.Is thiruda thiruda from Mani Ratnam? It was technically a brilliant movie, I liked the movie eventhough I could not understand a single dialogue.
Shekar Kapoor:Have seen a couple of movies, like Bandit Queen and Masoom, but I think that is suffecient to know the class of this guy.Apart from dabbling in serious movies , he has directed a light hearted sort of sci-fi , Mr India too, .
Hrishikesh Mukherje:Simple, amazingly touching , best of comedy Bollywood ever has to offer.Amitabh was lucky to be exploited to the hilt by directors like these.So many to name, Anand, Khubsoorat, Mili, Chupke Chupke, Abhimaan etc
Yash Chopra: The best of romantic movies this industry has to offer came from him, I absolutely love his mushy senti movies and the entire fairy tale settings.Chandni, Lamhe, Silsila, strangely even parts of DTPH .But nowadays its stretched too far by his followers, overdose of anything can prove to be fatal.
Mira Nair: You need not see scores of movies to gauge how talented a person is, it just shows.Eventhough I have only seen Salaam Bombay and Monsoon Wedding , its enough to mention her here.
The above are the only ones whom I consider the best , and I dont want to fill up the list just to reach a magical 10 figure.
The second rung of the ladder is occupied by :Nasir Hussain, Mansoor Khan, Manmohan Desai
The hopefuls among the present is: Ashustosh and Farhan.And somehow I personally believe Rahul Bose is extremely talented and has a great potential, but I dont know how successful he maybe in commercial world, but I like his offbeat overtones.
I have heard a great deal of many old directors , but I have not seen their classic works yet , trying to manage it soon, till then this is my list.