In a city without cinemas’ —I may sound like talking about some alien land when I say that in my childhood some feature films were produced in my mother tongue and screened in the cinema halls was not always like that, the city of Srinagar in my childhood had three cinema halls. The massive crowds and long serpentine queues outside ticket booths of the Palladium, the Regal and the Amrash cinemas…The big cinema hoardings outside cinema halls and on all crossings, film posters pasted on wooden lamp-posts, huge graffiti announcing screening new films and boys hanging around hoardings, hover before my eyes.
These cinemas had been there much before my birth tales about torturing of political opponents and humiliating the voices of dissent inside the Palladium Cinema, immediately after the flight of the last feudal ruler from the state. History does tell us about the Palladium Cinema becoming the headquarters of the National Conference after the landing of troops from New Delhi, but I don’t know if there is a social history that tells about the arrival of the cinema in Srinagar and its influences on the society. It sounds ironical, but there seems some sense in the belief that the arrival of cinema had some positive implications for our society as it saved a large number of youth from falling into the ‘snares of courtesans’ in the red light areas of the city, and in discouraging `bacha-nagama’ —.the boys would dance to the accompaniment of sitar, rahab and drums. In my childhood the courtesan culture had died and boy-dance was on the wane and it was confined to marriages but ‘cinema-going’ was at its best.
Going to cinema was not only the best pastime for the working class but a craze with the elite also. In January 1964, two out of the three cinemas were set ablaze by rioters protesting against displacement of the holy relic from the Hazratbal shrine. It was not a puritanical rage that had made the young men to torch these two cinemas but anger against the ruling family that owned these cinemas. When we were still at school a new cinema was constructed at Khanyar- half a mile from our Mohalla. It was a D-day for all boys when the first film was screened in this cinema named after great Iranian city Shiraz- a city that for Persian influence on our literature finds a mention in our many folk songs.
Manzirat — first ever Kashmiri feature film was produced in the early sixties by some producer from Bombay was screened in this cinema. Most of the artists of Radio Kashmir were playing one or the other role in the film. The story of the film was written by Ali Muhammad Lone — giant of Kashmiri literature in his right. Lyrics of Ghulam Rasool Santosh were put to music by maestro Mohan Lal Aima. A tall and handsome young man, Omkar Aima was in the lead role; cast against him was Krishna Wali as the heroin of the film. The film was co-produced by Pran Kishore. Others that played prominent roles in the film were Somnath Sadhu, Nabla Begum, Makhan Lal Saraf, Suraj Tikoo and Jagan Nath Saqi.
The film more or less was a radio feature put on celluloid and had failed to become a hit. It attracted very small crowds but some of the scenes from the film that had touched my sensibilities, when remembered still enliven me.
I vividly remember a dialogue by Makhan Lal Saraf who played the role of a village shopkeeper in the film… He picks up an egg from a basket with the dexterity of an artist and comments—”what has happened to Kashmiri hens; they now lay pigeon eggs”. I don’t know if the dialogue writer had written it just for the sake of pun but I always saw it as a subtle comment on the loss of values and decadence of the society. One of the shots, in which Jagar Nath Saqi makes a bid to thieve a neighbour’s cock, seemed an enactment of a real life scene of kulfikirs’ (gypsies) stealing cocks and hens same way.
Z.G.Muhammad is a noted writer and columnist
