Illustration/Uday Mohite

I'm not sure what brought on this nostalgia attack, recalling cinema theatres I've loved. I think it was the Ganesh visarjan devotees playing Lungi Dance that brought it on: in my childhood, the sarvajanik Ganesh festival brought the community together in many ways. There were competitions in singing, making rangolis, antakshari, athletics, cricket and badminton. Above all, they would screen popular Bollywood and Marathi movies, projected on a white bedsheet strung up over the colony chaurasta. You sat on the road with hundreds of colony people and learnt the skill of watching movies seedha (from the projector side) and ulta (from the back of the bedsheet, watching images in reverse), depending on where you managed to sit. A couple of thousand people enjoyed these nightly shows in theatre-less bliss.