The Suspension of Disbelief

I travelled almost the length of India over a period of two years, from Kashmir to Kerala, barring to Srinagar, entirely by road. With some zigging and zagging, I managed to visit 15 states, over 800 towns, driving in excess of 35,000km. I was on a personal quest. Trying to photo-document our rapidly vanishing single screen cinema theatre history. I’ve photographed almost 950 theatres. Of which a small but significant percentage have since been demolished. And others that have closed, might meet the same fate sooner than later.

Simple figures-since 1990, when India had an estimated 24,000 single screen cinema theatres, today the number stands anywhere as low as 9000 or fewer theatres. And diminishing further, even as I write this piece.

The single screen cinemas represented individuality, uniqueness, the ambitions of the owners, their financial standing, global trends in architecture and design, technology, familiarity and comfort, and sometimes design elements local to their towns. An entire eco-system, in fact, as the ancillary trades would flourish alongside these picture palaces. They were landmarks in their towns, their owners had an important standing in society. Like one cinema owner said to me, “You needed to know three people in a town to make life easier for yourself, the District Magistrate, the Chief of Police, and the owner of a cinema theatre…”.

Apart from the functioning cinema theatres, some struggling more than others, I managed to find my way into at least 200+ that were shut, or abandoned, some with permissions, some without. At the risk of being sued by some irate cinema owner reader, I can, without shame, say I have broken and entered quite a few spaces. I have jimmied locks and windows, slipped under shutters, climbed walls, jumped fences, kicked jammed doors, squeezed through gaps impossible. I’ve been gored by goats, crushed by cattle, stung by scorpions, aggravated by ants, battered by bats, pooped on by pigeons, molested by monkeys, and I would not like to go into the details of my Rottweiler reservation.

And I am happy to have done what I have. Almost anything is forgivable when the ends justify the means. And the ends have been incredible for me. Curiously, there is a large number of single screen cinemas in India, which only I have photographs of. A direct consequence of my occasional shamelessness and the inexplicable urge to complete a task at hand. And rise to a challenge.

During my entire life, even as a child, when I would visit historical monuments and historical places, my mind would always try to imagine the spaces when they were living and breathing entities. When there was hustle and bustle, life and death, humans and animals, birds and bees, celebrations, coronations and coups. And this feeling was constantly at the forefront of my mind while negotiating these abandoned or defunct, sometimes ruined, single screen cinema theatres. Sometimes the fragmented remains of a movie poster, a tattered lobby card, a dusty ticket stub, the rusted projectors, a mud caked reel of a movie, a discarded vacuum tube, corroded ushers’ torches, cobweb covered seats, would fire up my imagination. Identifiable objects allow for an identifiable emotional memory of that time.

Often I would sit quietly in these once-resounding spaces , and lapse into my imagination.

The Anticipation of Escape.

Suspension of disbelief is a curious phrase, it describes temporary escapism, supported by the discarding of logical thinking, evaluative thinking, or any kind of thinking at all, and allows you to leap into the realm of an all-defying emotional energy. It forms the very crux of the cinema experience, and can be one of the most critically difficult things to achieve, first for the filmmaker, and then for the audience. As a friend working at YRF films quoted Shri Yash Chopra, it seems he had once said, “Emotions are more powerful than Logic.”

The entire individual and collective energy was built on the simple anticipation of suspension of disbelief. To be able to enter a world of imagination and aspiration, to fall in and out of love, to feel joy and grief, fear and foreboding, mirth and laughter, to experience tears of pure emotion, distilled from a personal experience or in anticipation of one. To be inspired, and the desire to live the life one saw on screen, to dance and sing and fight and do impossible things. To be a Hero. A Heroine. A Villain. A Comic.

To be significant in one’s waking life.

And above all, I speak of an era when these feelings were achieved in cinema theatres that had a thousand people by your side. Like I said earlier, with an energy that is, equally, individual and collective.

The Quiver of Excitement.

I still cherish the memory of the relentless fidgeting, the murmur, the jostling, the worry, the annoying shirt (on the back of the person just ahead of me in the queue)…as we ambled forward, step by step, towards the last barrier between the self and the the impending journey into a fantastic world. The booking office window. The shirt ahead would leave, like a cinematic editing device-the wipe, revealing the small oval opening in front of us. At that exact moment, our vision would instinctively and involuntarily focus on the riot of pastel coloured tickets barely visible through it, and a pair of impatient hands. If we were lucky, we would get to see the seating chart and choose our preferred seats. Money would exchange hands. Conversation was minimum. And then the thrill of hearing the sound of your tickets being torn from the pack, receiving them in your grateful hands, a quick glance to check the show time and change, and we were on our way.

Buying a ticket from a black marketeer was often fraught with some possible confusion. Like the seats not being the ones promised, or the show being the next one! Even the black market tickets were a set up by the cinema owner, the booking clerk and his henchmen. A certain number of tickets per show were set aside and handed to the sellers, and the owner wanted a minimum return, the rest was shared amongst the others. One owner, however, would collect all the black market proceeds and put the money into the bank accounts of his employees. If anyone was caught blowing the money on alcohol or tobacco, he ran the risk of his account being suspended!

I met six black marketeers at one old movie theatre. Even though their ticketing had gone digital, the owners maintained a nostalgic relationship with these men, and would give each of them 5 tickets per day for the first week of a big release, to sell in black. After many hilarious conversations, one of them told me that all of their homes had a portrait of Amitabh Bachchan, in their prayer shrines…it seems they had made their maximum profits selling tickets for his movies in black. When the craze for Bachchan’s movies was so intense, they would sell 5 rupee tickets for as much as 100 rupees! This income went a long way in running their homes, educating their children, and even buying property…Bachchan was a God to them. The God of Plenty.

The Corridors of Power.

Once past the doorman, the ticket stub sacrificed for a greater purpose, we would be in the cinema theatre lobby. The enticing aromas of simple snacks wafting towards us from the simple canteens, wood and glass display cabinets full of lobby cards of the current and the expected films…”Coming Soon” was the immediate mental segue into the next possible visit, while “Now Showing” was often the first instance of any real evidence of what we were about to experience, because the lobby cards would have actual stills from the film! I think the absence of publicity (as we know it today), allowed for a much purer viewing experience. Nothing coloured our judgement, at best we had maybe heard a song or two on the radio, or read the odd magazine or newspaper article, which actually revealed very little. Even the billboards were hand-painted, so ones’ imagination was on fire.

A moment later, the door to the auditorium would be opened, sometimes the previous show would be ending at that time, and the sounds of the movie climax and from the audience within, were a mystical giveaway of what we were about to experience. Their hooting and cheering gave us hope of a spectacular three hours. Sometimes the audience would exit from in front of you, as superior beings, buzzing from the experience, looking down at you with victorious disdain. Soon, we would enter the dimly lit space, the sound of brooms sweeping up the recently created mess, a lifeless white screen in the distance, a surly man with a flashlight flashing his beam at our faces and then at our hands, and reaching out towards our tickets to quickly usher us to our seats.

One usher told me his main job, during the screenings of Jai Santoshi Ma, was to confiscate incense and matches from the puja thalis of the ladies who came to watch the film! On the first two days, the smoke from the incense had filled up the auditorium to a point that the screen was no longer visible. And they had to cancel the last show, they hired pedestal fans to blow the smoke out! They then installed a statue of Santoshi Ma outside the theatre, and all the prayers and offerings were made before the show began!

The Flight into Fantasy.

Wooden seats, metal seats, solid or slatted seats, a cushioned seat, sometimes even a cushioned seat back, rigid or reclining seats, seats wrapped in canvas, or rexine, rarely in leather, benches, sand pits, extra chairs in the aisles, steps, standing room, leaking roofs, creaking fans, inadequate desert coolers, mosquitos, flies, bedbugs, beedi and cigarette smoke, everything was acceptable. The concept of discomfort did not exist, it was the movie that conditioned your mood and made everything else unimportant. Often, for a hit film, 1200 tickets would be sold for 1000 seats. If your seat wasn’t numbered, you just stood or sat wherever you could find the space to do so. The 200 extra tickets were forgeries, created by the cinema owner to make his profits rise above the income marred by rising taxes. The excise department was very much in cahoots with this endeavour, and the representative got his daily cut from the illegal earnings. This practice also allowed the weekly envelopes to reach the local police station…

I still remember my first cinema experience, as a 6 year old in 1974. My father, an India Air Force officer, was posted to Digaru, Assam. The Air Force Station was in a secluded area, and one old aircraft hangar doubled as a cinema theatre, we went for movie shows with our own seating accessories, cushions, dhurries, even empty Dalda Vanaspati tins! The film being shown that night was by I.S. Johar, called “5 Rifles”, and I remember being deeply invested in the antics of a dog in the movie. When suddenly, the screen went white, as the celluloid print got burnt and the image evaporated from the screen, before our very eyes! After some hullabaloo, the show was cancelled and we returned home, me a disappointed child, who never found out what happened to my canine star! Sub-consciously, I was always secretly tense for years after that experience, whenever I sat in a movie theatre…

One cinema owners who had retained some rows of wooden benches right in the front. Some of their patrons were not that well off and would come to watch the movie with their two or three kids, but could not afford so many tickets. They were given the free seating in front, and could happily adjust their family members according to the space available.

While desperately hunting for the site of a lost cinema theatre, armed with just the name, and the knowledge that it had shut over thirty years previously, the task became more and more impossible. No one in the town seemed to remember it at all! I eventually found the lane it had possibly stood on, found the eldest person I could and asked him for help. I gave him the name of the cinema and told him I had been hunting for it for almost half a day! He had a hearty laugh and told me I was looking for the right cinema, but with the wrong name…apparently, it had been built in the late 1800s, converted into a cinema theatre in the 1940s, and shut in the 1980s. And had seen little or no renovation or maintenance during its entire existence. Over the years the locals had renamed the cinema and the original name had been completely forgotten. He said, had I asked for “Khatmal (Bedbug) Talkies”, everyone would have known about it…and then he pointed behind me at a residential structure, which had replaced the cinema theatre. I had reached the exact spot where it had once stood!

Dancing in the Aisles.

The identification with a character, the emotional or aspirational upheavals related to that moment, were often expressed with spontaneity and vigour. The audience would dance with the actors on screen, the dancing abilities of the person were never questioned, the freedom to be able to do so was very special.

A hit song was identified by the toilet activity. The fewer people rushing to the loo, the bigger a hit was the song.

Curiously, toilet gender demarcations were announced by magazine cuttings of the reigning stars of the time. So a current female star would find her image on the Ladies’ loo door, and the reigning male star, on the Gents’! I found poor Sanjeev Kumar on a loo door in an abandoned cinema theatre in Wankaner!

One cinema owner told me how, sometimes, on a Thursday night, before the Friday release of a new film, they would receive phone calls from residents of the locality the cinema theatre was in. Apparently, they could hear the sounds of songs and scenes from the new, and unseen, film. The owners would rush to the theatre to find it quiet and empty. It was inexplicable, but the residents could hum a tune or recite a dialogue from what they had heard. This happened once or twice a year. And each time it did, the new film was a huge hit. The owners had started anticipating the success of the film based on this spooky occurence. And stayed awake many a hopeful Thursday night waiting for phone calls!

An ex-usher told me how they would collect discarded bottle caps in the canteen and stash them in their pockets. Sometimes a few would be given to a well-wisher planted in the audience. At a critical moment, they would fling these bottle caps at the screen, the clink of the metal sounded like coins, and others from the audience would follow with actual money! After a show ended and the audience left, and before the next show could start, there was a rapid and urgent sweeping effort and all the coins and bottle caps would be collected in a bucket. At the end of the day, the collected sum would be distributed equally amongst the cinema theatre staff, and the bottle caps kept ready to be flung during the next show.

The Flicker of Hope.

Don’t we all, from that era, remember the clockwork ticking of the projector and that first image that would light up the screen? The beam above our heads, dancing and flickering, catching the dust on its way to the vast whiteness in front of us. Bringing it to life. When an inanimate object gets infused with drama and emotional hyperboles. We sat transfixed, almost nailed to our seats. While the old Films Division newsreels witnessed some restlessness and disinterest, the sudden hush in the theatre was always caused by the magical appearance of the Censor Certificate. And the number of reels were a direct indication of the duration of our pleasure.

I encountered some screens in smaller towns, that were made up of several sections of cotton fabric of equal width, stitched together to form a whole. One owner told me how it was prohibitively expensive for them to buy a proper cinema screen from Bombay, based on their ticket prices and marginal profits. So every year, they would buy several lengths of khadi cotton fabric, and all the ladies in the family would come together to stitch a new screen for the theatre!

A slight misalignment of the projector, or the unexpected dimness of the image on the screen would spark a furore in the audience, some of the choicest invective and abuse would be hurled at the protectionist. And miraculously, everything would fall into place and the excitement would settle.

I met a 65 year old projectionist, in 2019, the son of the older projectionist of the same theatre. His father had been the first projectionist when the theatre was opened in 1949. The projection room became his childhood playground, and as it often happens in India, the son followed the father into the same profession. When his father decided to retire the son took over. A few years ago, the son, (55 years old by then) was taught how to operate the new digital projector. It had been installed between the two old 35mm projectors, a lifeless and soundless black plastic box, between those gigantic and gorgeous brass beauties. I asked him how he felt today, after so many decades of operating those tactile monsters, saddled with this new machine. He said that in the days of 35mm projectors, if there was ever an issue on screen (focus, alignment or brightness), the audience would be very vocal with their demands and colourful with their language. He said that since the digital projector had been installed, a device devoid of human and analogue considerations, the audience had forgotten the presence of a living being in the projection room. And he misses the abuses! To be abused, he said, was at least an acknowledgment of my presence and my abilities!

And sadly, because the new digital projectors don’t have a mechanical shutter, the beam doesn’t even flicker any more…

The End.

And then of course, with all the hooting and cheering, the victory of good over evil, requited or unrequited love, the villain vanquished, the songs memorable, emotionally drained, joyful and elated, we would exit the auditorium smiling at each other and feeling the adrenalin coursing through our psyche. Until we came out into the street to see the crowds thronging the gates. The same gates that we had been standing before, barely three hours ago.

And I still vividly remember what I felt when I would see those hundreds of hopefuls standing in lines for a ticket to watch the film…victorious disdain.

I watched it before you.

(This appeared in the print edition as "The Suspension Of Disbelief")

Hemant Chaturvedi was a cinematographer in the Hindi film industry and is now a still photographer