In the 1980s, one kind of theatre was dwindling and another gaining momentum in Kolkata, though one not necessarily causing the rise or fall of the other. Theatre of the commercial kind, with little traces left now, was in its final throes. Yet, it drew an audience that filled auditoriums even if the middle class was often disapproving of its gaudy productions. These auditoriums in the north of the city were also located in close proximity to the Sonagachhi, the largest red light area in Kolkata — hinging back to the history of commercial theatre there, when most actresses were from Sonagachhi.

The alley in the picture above is from north Kolkata. A cluster of houses with maze-like lanes often leading out to a playhouse, now crumbling or absent. Some called the theatre, ‘paras’ (Bengali: locality). They carry the tell-tale signs of time and history on them. It is in such a lane that the protagonist, a teenaged boy, of the novel, The Firebird, grows up developing a hatred for theatre as his mother performs in the playhouses nearby. PIC COURTESY/RAJAT Chaudhuri