‘Days of rationed movies are over’

House bound by a minor ailment I have had nothing to do this last fortnight but watch movies. On DVD, HBO, Star, TCM, Zee MGM, Cable - the options for a couch potato these days are mind boggling. The surfeit made me long for the days when movies were rationed. Partly of course because there were hardly any movie houses in the city.

In Santacruz where I grew up, the only cinema house in the vicinity was a ramshackle one called Lido where all the vagrants and domestic workers of the area congregated on Friday evenings to catch the first show of every latest release. Then one day, a medium sized AC cinema hall called Milan came up next to the subway on the airport road and transformed life for the middle class.

And suddenly, it seemed cinema houses were springing up all over the place : Ambar-Oscar-Minor in Andheri where I remember watching 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea and An Evening In Paris, Gaiety-Galaxy-Gemini and Chandan, which was a favourite of the fast evolving JVPD scheme till rumours abounded of a rape on the lonely approach road leading to it.

Most theatres in the sixties were not air conditioned, the chairs often had bugs and you had to book way in advance for tickets.

Opera House and Roxy were the best known for Hindi movies downtown.
I remember the rush of excitement I used to feel as the hoardings of the two came into view - large, lurid and covering every inch of brick and stone. Novelty came up at some stage and Apsara with its peculiar space age look.
And Minerva of course, playing host to the biggie Sholay and ensuring instant recall with its ingenuous ad line ‘Pride of Maharasthra’. These along with Dreamland, Alankar (bordering dangerous red light territory) and Naaz were the ones for Hindi movies. When it came to English films that’s when the lines between North and South Mumbai were very clearly drawn.

All the latest English releases came to the cinema houses in town. Metro, before it made the transition to Bollywood, Regal the cinema house that faced an onslaught of underage boys trying to pass off as adults in the late seventies when it screened Enter The Dragon; New Empire, New Excelsior and Sterling.

The last mentioned was a regular for children’s morning shows (Alice In Wonderland, Tarzan) just as Metro once was - vividly described by Salman Rushdie in Midnight’s Children. Locally made children’s films in black and white were also screened on weekend afternoons at the Tarabai auditorium on Marine Lines.

My favourite and the same goes for many people I know was the New Talkies in Bandra. Small, and without air conditioning for many years, it screened English films - arbitrarily, that is, one never knew what to expect as in an old or a new film.

In school we played hookey to watch To Sir With Love and Butterflies Are Free. In later years it began to screen films straight after they had finished their run in town in its night shows. These late screenings were wildly popular and had the atmosphere of a party with students and young professionals some in slippers and pyjamas, others having taken in a couple of after work drinks at Casbah across the road filling the hall. I have seen most of these cinema houses fade away. I have seen Milan being broken down. Seen Ambar Oscar Minor turn into the glitzy Shoppers Stop. I have wandered around Opera House way past its glory, admiring the paintings and the box seats, and looking down at an empty compound and have the manager describe a time when it was packed with vehicles and glittering people. And I have seen New Talkies turn into a big hole in the ground covered with tin sheets on all sides.

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