The cinema, that’s also our ghar!

Roopbani Cinema, the only theatre in Purnea, Bihar. PIC/X/@VishekC

Growing up in Delhi, mid/late '90s, and from the same school (DPS, RK Puram) - Saurabh, Raghav, Vishek, and I were besties, who spent some of our happiest days, over at Paras's, Priya's, or Chanakya's.

The latter were homes, alright. Only, our friends in there were films. Of these, Chanakya's no more. When the said demise occurred, around 2007, I felt as if a family member had passed on. There's something humanising about cinemas that sound like people. They seem one of us.

If you lived around Juhu, Mumbai, for instance - I'm sure, you'd have felt the same way about Chandan. Or Bahar (still around, in Vile Parle), where Aamir Khan as the ‘blackiya', along with Pakhiya, scalps tickets for Mr Bond in Rangeela (1995)!

These single-screen cinemas are where metropolitan masses merged, while separated between different classes of seats, breathing the same air, inhaling the same story - no matter what their monthly income, political orientation, or social status.

Thanks to Vishek's helpful prodding, it's where I learnt to truly appreciate Sunny Deol stomping his two left feet to ‘Yaara o' yaara' in Jeet (1996) picture for what it is. The movie may not have been specifically directed at me. But you also go to a concert for others, who enjoy that music. Energies are infectious.

Vishek Chauhan, whose family owns the movie house

By the late 2000s, let alone scoring tickets at premium rates from scalpers - many of these theatres, across India, were shuttering, altogether. Multiplexes, mostly within malls had, perhaps, rendered them commercially unviable.

Our buddy, Anupam, in Delhi's Saket, was the first to switch over to sanitised, multiple screens (PVR, in 1997), where fewer people could pack several shows, timings, with plusher seats; pretty much pricing out the poor. You needed bigger crowds still to fill up much huger halls, 4x365 shows a year. How many such universal event-pictures are there, anyway?

This wasn't the first time single-screens had taken a major hit. In a reverse onslaught of sorts in the 1980s and '90s, Indian upper/middle-classes had largely abandoned dingy, stinky cinemas, preferring homes for movies, on TV, video, later VCDs, and DVDs.

Cinema's way to woo ‘class audiences', if you recall movie posters from the time, was to aggressively advertise itself as "Fully air-conditioned," "DTS (Digital Theatre Systems", "Dolby (sound)," etc. They had to literally clean up their act. Those that upgraded survived.

One such is Roopbani (literally, Appearance-Sound) Cinema in Purnea - a relatively rare single-screen, still standing, in the Seemanchal region of Bihar, bordering Bengal and Nepal. Said bum-chum Vishek (Chauhan) runs this cinema, owned by his family, over multiple generations.

He's written a book, Cinema Forever: How Movie Theatres Fought Back Against TV, Home Video, Streaming and Survived Two Pandemics.

Of which the latter once made him pace down his theatre's lobby, circa 2020 - wondering, if he may have to convert it into a banquet hall. That thought killed him. His theatre lives on. Crowds, addicted to sasta GB/movies on cellphones, inevitably, returned, post-pandemic. And wow, like how! Why's that?

Packed with exhaustive data and history, especially from American cinema, in fine textbook style - Vishek examines each challenge to OG big screens, that made them better shared-experiences, instead.

This is right from TV, introduced in the US, in the 1940s/'50s, that turned cinemas, from B&W into fully colour! Down to streamers/OTTs - that are both video libraries and theatres in themselves - that pushed cinemas all the more towards "premium large formats".

How do you even hope to compete with the glorious IMAX, for instance? Also, film genres are simply cyclical. Once in, you enjoy all, eventually.

For me, a theatre remains therapeutic - you're by yourself, among strangers; emotionally bonding, yet physically detached - that home entertainment can never match.

I've been to Roopbani twice, chasing down Purnea's ‘baahubali' Pappu Yadav, during general elections (2019, '24). The theatre's a vibrant landmark. As cinemas in all districts tend to be.

Several Indian towns, however, have no cinema at all. Vishek cites: There are merely 9700 screens across India, versus 42,000 in the US, and 81,000 in China.

He asserts the antidote to the distractive, tiny/small screen is actually more big screens - that "focused attention" bears no parallel still. As you can tell from even OTTs relying on box-office figures to pick up films to expand their own subscriber base! All new media have only coexisted with cinema.

What do people see, collectively looking up from that darkness into the dazzlingly-lit semi-sky? Vishek argues, theatres are still where a film becomes a cultural moment, and a star is born. Couldn't agree more.

Reminds me of that line - no, I'm not gonna quote Gangs of Wasseypur, but Scam 1992, "Tujhe pata hai India mein sabse zyada kya manufacture hota hai? (You know what's most manufactured in India?).
Cement, steel? [Nope]. Heroes, aur bhagwan!"

Heroes is what we desperately lack in real life. This stardom separates Indian cinema from most other film industries, globally. Of course, that star could be human/Salman, even He-Man/Hanu-Man!

Mayank Shekhar attempts to make sense of mass culture. He tweets @mayankw14
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