The start of a love affair

Twenty years after the first movie had been shown to great applause in Mumbai, none of us living mostly in small towns and villages had any idea what it was all about. We had seen some pictures in the newspapers and heard some songs, but that's about it. I personally did not see a real movie until I was eight. Until that is, my grandmother took pity on us and arranged a show for us. She got one of her friends to put up a compound - a thatched affair - in the town and took us all there in a couple of bullock carts, mostly children but also some adults, and we found ourselves sitting in upholstered chairs and sofas right in front of a screen, waiting for the light to go up. The theatre was more a kind of stockade in a western film, not the kind Romans would have preferred. Bu

This article was originally published on November 06, 2021.