“I will buy half-tickets to watch the film till the interval. The rest of the story, I’ll make up in my mind. Surprisingly, I rarely got the ending wrong,” says Bashir Ahmed Dada. The famous Kashmiri poet and actor recalls, in those days those who could not afford a full ticket were allowed to buy half a ticket.
Hailing from South Kashmir’s Anantnag district, Dada says that in the 1970s and 1980s every section of society loved watching Bollywood and Hollywood movies, and theaters thronged in Srinagar and elsewhere in the Valley. “I have seen police lathi-charging outside Nishat Talkies in Anantnag to maintain order during ticket sales before the screening.”
in 1985, when desert lion Shown at Srinagar’s Regal Cinema, Dada joined serpentine queues to watch a film about Libyan anti-colonial resistance icon Omar Mukhtar (1862–1931), who spent the last 20 years of his life fighting the Italian occupation of his country. Spent fighting Given their sharp understanding of history and politics, Kashmiris immediately began comparing Mukhtar to their own great leader, Sheikh Mohammed Abdullah.
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After 22 years of imprisonment, Sheikh’s 1975 pact with Prime Minister Indira Gandhi was still fresh in his memory. The film and Mukhtar’s life story had a profound impact on Kashmiri’s understanding of sacrifice and compromise. Dada watched the audience get emotional during the scene in which a younger boy in the crowd raises glasses belonging to the elderly guerrilla after hanging at the end of the film. “It had a chilling effect on the audience, and they re-evaluated Shaikh’s choice, leaving him with a bitter sense of betrayal. Everyone in the theater stood up to take on Mukhtar’s glasses,” he says.
Immediately, people can be seen tearing down Sheikh’s posters in Srinagar. Since 1931, Sheikh has been the undisputed mass leader in the Valley, but later desert lionThat image collapsed. Status quo turned into status quo, never returned to status quo.
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Historian Khalid Bashir recalls how the first movie theater in Kashmir built by Bhai Anant Singh Ghori in 1932 at Lal Chowk (named after Moscow’s Red Square) depicts the history of Kashmir. Originally named Kashmir Talkies, it was later changed to the Palladium after the famous St Petersburg theatre. In the 1940s, leftist ideology had a strong influence on Kashmir, not least in symbolism and egalitarian aspirations.
The next theater to open in the valley was Regal, that too at Lal Chowk. Created by a Punjabi speaking family, his descendant Rohit Bal is a prominent fashion designer. It dropped its shutters after 1990, and is to be replaced by a shopping mall. In 1955, recalls a merchant, when Srinagar flooded and Regal was inundated, patrons used to put logs of wood on the stairs to reach the level gallery.
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Bashir recalls that Palladium is central to the history of film watching in Kashmir. He says it was the oldest movie hall in North India and would screen Hollywood films before their release in Delhi. Many old-timers say that the 1980s of Srinagar was far ahead of any Indian Metro. Raj had left a deep impact on Srinagar. The area around the Bund—a footbridge on Residency Road—was its most chic, fashionable place. Most of the houseboats were open only to foreigners, as Indians could not afford them. The shops in Lambert Lane were exactly where you would go to get noticed.
Theaters that played Hollywood films also translated their titles into the local language, although the transition was often clumsy. three Musketeers, for example, became three bad guys in Urdu.
Across Srinagar, dusty old photo studios still prominently display frames with Bollywood actors to attract tourists. Senior photojournalist Nisar Ahmed says that till the 1980s, photographers never missed the opportunity to take their pictures with Bollywood stars during myriad shoots in the Valley. “I took pictures with Rishi Kapoor myself,” he recalls.
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“Dilip Kumar was the craze. I have seen people standing in meditation when Dilip Kumar first came on screen. In those days, I used to take classes and even evening prayers to go to the movies,” says Abdul Hamid, a prominent businessman in the valley. He remembers people who couldn’t buy a ticket or catch one, who waited at the theater gate to hear the story from those who came out after the show and then let their imagination take over. . “Black marketers were king. You can recognize them by their swagger,” he adds.
When Khana-e-Khuda Issued in 1968, many ‘ticket blackers’ urged buyers to remove their shoes before entering the hall. The audience obliged too. years later, in the 1980s, when Bible Shown in Shiraz, Muslim clerics insisted that they should see it first and be allowed to clear it for public viewing. Administration is obliged. Surprisingly, the film got cleared without any cuts.
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In the turbulent autumn of 1947, the Palladium became the headquarters of the Kashmiri Nationalist Party led by Sheikh Abdullah. Writer Andrew Whitehead writes, “It was a radical, secular movement, which had closer ties with the Congress Party of India than the Muslim League of Pakistan.” When in November 1948, Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru visited Srinagar and addressed a huge crowd along with Sheikh Abdullah, the Palladium provided the backdrop. It was here that Nehru promised a plebiscite to the people of Jammu and Kashmir, and recited a Persian couplet describing the Sheikh as his alter ego:
Mun Tu Shudam Tu Mun Shudi, Mun Tu Shudam Tu Jaan Shudi
Takas na gyaad bad azeen, mun degaram tu dega
(I became you and you are me, I am the body, you are its soul;
After this no one can say that you are someone and I am someone else)
The Nehru-Sheikh relationship ended six years later, when, on August 9, 1953, Sheikh was arrested from Gulmarg in the Kashmir conspiracy case on Nehru’s instructions.
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By 1964, all three theaters in Kashmir were located at Lal Chowk in Srinagar. Then Shiraz came to Khanyar in the heart of the old city. Bashir says it started with Raj Kapoor-Vijayantimala-Rajendra Kumar starrer confluence, and drew a packed crowd.
Former bureaucrat-turned-politician Naeem Akhtar says he was the last excise officer in 1989 to collect entertainment tax before theaters were closed with the start of the rebellion in 1990. “The system collapsed in 1990, and with it, theaters were closed. “
In September 1989, a rumor spread in the old town that people were disappearing. This happened just after the killing of National Conference Party worker M. Yusuf Halwai and firing outside the residence of DIG Police AM Watli, in which terrorist Ejaz Ahmed Dar was killed. Akhtar says that the administration and police were unaware of the turmoil in the Valley, and considered these incidents to be a general law and order problem. There was tremendous pressure on the police to make an arrest. “Police parked two buses outside the Shiraz cinema, caught moviegoers leaving the theater and asked them to board the buses, with the promise that they would be dropped at their destination. Instead, he was taken to Khanyar police station and produced as a suspect,” he added.
The ruins of Palladium are a fitting motif for today’s times. Like other theaters in Srinagar—Neelam, Firdous, Shiraz—the palladium is occupied by the CRPF, endangering the concertina wires marking its borders. However, the CRPF has painted its ‘bunkers’ red, perhaps alluding to Lal Chowk.
(It appeared in the print edition as “Newsreel from the Valley in Eastmancolor”)
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By Naseer Ganai in Srinagar
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