The innocent charm of queuing up for tickets at a cinema hall, eventually procuring one at triple the price from the ubiquitous tout, and coming out to the foyer for a cigarette during the interval will never be back. All that will remain is the nostalgia, writes CHANDAN MITRA
Delhi encapsulates all stages of urban evolution in India — ancient, medieval, modern and post-modern. What was once a sleepy outpost of British imperial arrogance living cheek-by-jowl, with decaying remnants of the once spectacular Mughal grandeur, Delhi began a journey to modernity with the advent of the 20th century. But it was still a slow transition even after the British transferred their Imperial capital here in 1911. British Delhi planned in meticulous detail by Edwin lutyens, assisted by Henry Baker, was not fully peopled till 1931 and then, too, merely marked time till Independence. However, an unplanned population avalanche happened in the tragic aftermath of the Partition of 1947. Delhi hasn’t stopped growing since, both in geographical size and the number of people who reside therein.
Cinema halls grew with the city; the newer the locality, the better the technology and viewer amenities. Indeed it is possible to capture the history and sociology of modern Delhi by studying its movie halls, at least till the early 21st century when standalone theatres went into decline, new ones losing their individual identity and cultural uniqueness within the consumerist anonymity of burgeoning shopping malls. It is a measure of writer Ziya Us Salam’s love for Delhi and Hindi cinema that he has successfully captured the ethos of movie theatres of Delhi in their heyday.
There was a time when filmgoers were not choosy about the amenities that cinema halls offered. People would flock to the nearest theatre, irrespective of the facilities offered. This was true even till the later decades of the 20th century. Today’s generation would scarcely believe there were halls which did not even bother to have paper tickets! Instead of printed tickets, the authorities used to stamp a client’s lower arm with the hall’s rubber stamp.
One such hall was Robin Talkies, located in a lane leading to a haveli diagonally opposite Amba cinema in Ghanta Ghar, between Old Subzi Mandi and Shakti Nagar in North Delhi. Amba was one of the best and spacious halls near Delhi University’s North Campus and thus frequented by students. An avid filmgoer, I proudly claim to have watched every new Hindi film for years, on the first day of its release, even if not the first day, first show. Many of them were in Amba from where we often walked back to our hostels past midnight jumping over the barbed wire fence that separated my hostel block in St Stephen’s College from the road.
But for several years even I did not know there existed a hall called Robin tucked away in the innards of a gateway to a haveli right opposite Amba. My visit to this unique movie hall was rather accidental and happened towards the end of my university life. In 1980, just before I left for Oxford to pursue my doctoral degree, my students (I was then teaching in Hansraj College), decided to throw a farewell party. Hostellers of Hansraj, like many of their counterparts in other college hostels, were ferocious drinkers. Discreet or responsible drinking did not exist in their vocabulary.
They poured about a dozen bottles of beer and several bottles of cheap Indian whisky into a big plastic bucket and then pushed a slab of ice into the concoction. Using mugs to pour out the lethal liquid into paper cups, they drank themselves silly. I can’t claim to have remained aloof from the merriment. In that inebriated state, somebody floated the idea of watching a movie. Since the film showing at Amba was sold out, they persuaded me to try Robin. I still recall, we were 18 of us and as I was perhaps the only person relatively sober, a bouncer sort of man held my left hand and proceeded to speedily use the rubber stamp, while pushing the students inside one by one. We trudged up the stairs smelling of urine and lacquered with paan remnants, spat out by countless past visitors to the precincts. At the head of the stairs, men had to turn in one direction while women (mostly burqa-clad) turned in the other. The segregation was strict.
I went off to sleep despite the discomfort only to be woken up by students during the interval. There being no men’s loo on the premises, the call of nature could be answered only on the main road facing Ghanta Ghar. Since my hand bore the stamps, that is, the tickets, I had to accompany everybody out of the hall. On re-entry, the same burly character crossed those stamps with a pen to ensure that no one except the paying customers could sneak in. When the show ended, I have no recollection of the movie, (possibly a C-grade Dara Singh, Sheikh Mukhtar type as only this sort was exhibited at this theatre) but do remember having somehow stumbled back to Hansraj and crashed for the night. I am told Robin closed shop some years ago, but in retrospect I am glad I paid that one visit there for how else would I have known that India’s Capital had movie halls like this only three decades agoIJ
In fact, I would not have got to know Delhi itself but for its movie halls scattered across this large and ever-expanding city. Addicted to watching Hindi films from my high school days with an equally avid filmgoer friend, I was bereft of company for a couple of years. Most Stephanians were the angrezi type, both in their taste for music and movies. Till I struck a chord with a student two years my junior, very often I would go alone, discovering Delhi through its movie halls, travelling by bus or autorickshaw.
Since Old Delhi was relatively close to the campus, I watched most films in halls like Palace, Amba, Alpna (Model Town), Ritz and liberty (Kashmere Gate), Golcha in Daryaganj (where I almost got beaten up by some burqa-clad women for mistakenly entering the women’s loo), all Chandni Chowk halls — Kumar, Moti, Radhu and the quaint Majestic. This was quaint because it seemed to me to have been a haveli’s courtyard converted into a theatre. A narrow balcony ran on three sides and a multitude of pillars provided support to the roof from which hung a few dozen ceiling fans. The problem was that if you were unlucky to get a seat behind one such pillar, you invariably ended up with a pain in your neck caused by craning from side to side. Salam tells us that Majestic also provided some other (forbidden) pleasures to the Walled City gentry once the shows were over. But such activities had ceased by the time I came around to watching movies there.
Often bored during weekends, I would scour the city by bus, asking co-passengers or pedestrians to guide me to various halls. On other occasions, I just walked around discovering halls in pursuit of a movie I wanted to watch. Thus I remember locating Sudarshan in a crowded lane connecting Yusuf Sarai to Gautam Nagar leading on to Niti Bagh. I had gone out of my local guardian’s flat alone to watch a film titled Umang starring two long forgotten names, Vijay Arora and Archana Gupta, and believe it or not, Subhash Ghai (as villain)!
Salam tells us that once upon a time Sudarshan was a hall swank enough for Jawaharlal Nehru to have visited it! You too wouldn’t believe this today if you happen to jostle people and two/three wheelers on that narrow lane. Going through Salam’s compilation brought back many memories. One was fracturing an ankle trying to get down from a running bus to catch a show of Mere Jeevansathi at the now extinct Kamal cinema in Safdarjang Enclave. Sadly many of the halls with whom I grew up, such as Archana and Uphaar are history now, the latter tragically so.
But one movie hall that will never get erased from my memory is Chanakya, with its distinctive architecture and plush interiors. Apart from watching umpteen movies here (preferred because the DTC’s night service buses ran past this hall and took us to Mall Road in the Campus). Also, it was in Chanakya that I hosted a film premiere. As Secretary of my College’s Students’ Union Society, I successfully persuaded Manoj Kumar to give us the premiere of Roti, Kapda Aur Makaan to help the Union raise funds. Unfortunately, the then President of India, Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed (whose son was a classmate) and who was to preside over the event had bereavement in the family just days before the release and we had to make do with the then Vice-President BD Jatti. But nevertheless, I was the object of widespread envy in college for having sat next to the heartthrob of the times, Zeenat Aman. Amitabh Bachchan was still not a mega-superstar, but was on the way to achieving cult status. I remember him coming in late and not finding a seat, sitting on the floor right till the end.
Salam’s collection may not be enthralling reading for the non-buff, but it is a collector’s manuscript for it not only describes almost every cinema hall with which the 60s and 70s generation grew up in this city, but also narrates the history of several legendary hall owners, most of whom migrated from Pakistan and made a fortune entertaining a few generations of Delhiwalas.
Cinema halls have lost their identity with the advent of the multiplex and shopping malls within which many of them are now located. Their seating is more comfortable than ever before and both the sound system and projection techniques world class. But then, there is nothing to distinguish one hall from the next. So there will never be a successor volume to Salam’s account.
Also the innocent charm of queuing up for tickets, eventually procuring one at triple the price from the ubiquitous tout, coming out to the foyer for a cigarette during the interval will never be back. All that will remain is the nostalgia. Many thanks, Salam Sa’ab for sending my generation jogging down the memory lane.