A CINEMA HALL DOWN MEMORY LANE

     

           My father had a short stint as the manager of a cinema hall, Randeep Theater, in the small sleepy town of Nahan almost 60 years ago. Aged eight, I was the youngest of the four brothers and we saw almost every movie screened there - a family ritual for us on the opening day. So I was introduced to Hindi Movie world during my infant years and it ran parallel to my life since then. The film posters and scenes from movies decorated walls of our home and were often intermingled with our family photographs.

During our tender years, we especially liked the children movies as it was easy to identify with the characters. The films like “Hum Panchi Ek Daal Ke” and “Jagriti” are still etched in my memory. I remember having wept profusely during the song, “Chalo chalen Maa” in Jagriti. I had lost my mother recently and the touching song had a cathartic effect on my juvenile mind. Action movies containing some fighting sequences were also our favourites. We eagerly awaited films featuring our pet action heroes like Ranjan, Premnath, Ajit, Shiekh Mukhtiar, Mahipal etc. and sometimes requested our father to requisition these movies. More often than not he obliged us. He himself was an avid lover of films and managed the cinema hall with the zeal of a librarian who is also a lover of books or a gardener in love with his plants. He raised his four sons with the same fervour. A widower at the age of 39, he never married again as he did not want to foist a stepmother on his precious children.

I still have the fond memories of Randeep Theater where we were witness to countless movies. It was a medieval bungalow type building made up of chiselled stones. It had a gallery with about 15-20 seats, four box-cabins below it and a small main hall. It may sound curious to a modern cine-goer that the male and female audience were seated separately in the two portions of that cinema hall partitioned by a four feet high curtain. There were separate entries for gents and ladies on both sides of the hall. When the lights went out at the start of the movie a boy ran from the front of the hall to its back holding the curtain sliding with the metallic rings. Similarly, at the end of the movie just before the lights were turned on, the boy ran from the back of the hall to the front drawing the curtain. Even today, when I see a movie in a modern theater or a multiplex, the sound of the curtain sliding on the metallic rings echoes in my subconscious mind at the start of the movie, at interval or at its end.

Another interesting feature associated with that old cinema hall which makes me nostalgic about it was its legendary projectionist, named Bankey. Few people had actually seen him but almost every cinegoer in town was familiar with his name. Whenever there was a power failure or interruption or any flaw in the sound during the screening of a movie, the whole hall reverberated with the vociferous abuses hurled on “Bankey”.

  The cinematic experience was altogether different from today. No popcorn or Coca-Cola at the interval, but the smell of moongphalis and fried chanas pervaded the atmosphere. There were no internet or advance booking then, but the long queues for tickets which, more often than not, were broken and a mini-chaos ensued.  Sometimes, when a blockbuster movie was released in town, the hushed calls of small-time blackias could also be heard -- “Teen ka paanch”, “Paanch ka aath” -- akin to the scenes from Dev Anand’s Kala Bazaar.

The building of the Randeep Theatre is nonexistent today. A residential colony has sprung up in its place. But we remember our old cinema hall with nostalgic affection. It is still the part of the folklore of this small sleepy heritage town. So is its shadowy projectionist, Bankey. And so is my father.