My love affair with movies begin at a very early age. I was fortunate enough to grow up in a place where children’s movies were screened two Fridays a month, English movies every Saturday and Hindi movies every Sunday. The weekly outings to the auditorium became a habit before I even realised it.
Those were not the times where we could pick and choose which movies to watch. So, my friends and I would sit through all kinds of movies, The Good, the Bad and the Lousy. But we also lapped up some classic movies for kids- Laurel & Hardy, Abbot & Costello, Charlie Chaplin, and a bouquet of Disney cartoons that included Pluto, Goofy, Chip ‘n’ Dale and those non-Disney timeless, everlastingly hilarious Tom and Jerry cartoons.
Being a defence establishment, many war movies were screened and I watched them all, absorbing history and trivia together. At that time, we kids didn’t really know the value of the movies that we took so much for granted and would be made available for us. Nor were we so knowledgeable or discriminating as to decide whether such and such a movie would be worth watching or not. All I know is that we hardly ever walked out of the auditorium mid-way. If the movie was good, we’d be engrossed, if not, we’d spend our time munching on deep-fried peanuts and chugging down Gold Spot.
The fact that I can equally appreciate and enjoy the fare dished out by both Hollywood and Bollywood is largely due to those years spent watching movies every single weekend. That’s when I used to swoon over Clint Eastwood and Harrison Ford just as much as I was crazily infatuated with Vinod Khanna. I sat through some truly execrable movies without wincing because, hey- surfing channels and visiting multiplexes hadn’t even been dreamed of.
The arrival of Ye Grande Olde Doordarshan did open up some more options, thankfully. Although DD was very parsimonious about showing movies- just the one on Sunday evenings. But the wait from one Sunday to the next was made bearable by the mid-week program ‘Chaaya Geet’. How we used to wait for that precious half-hour of randomly selected hindi film songs, uninterrupted by today’s blitzkrieg of ads.
Then there was the delightful ‘Phool Khile Hain Gulshan Gulshan’ in which the vivacious and charmingly dimpled Tabassum would interview celebrities from the film world.
If today I’m still familiar with the B & W classics of the past, it is thanks entirely to DD and our ‘dabba’ TV with the single channel and knobs that read ‘VERT HOLD’ or ‘CONTRAST’ or ‘FINE TUNING’.
My appetite for movies was equally nourished by another ‘dabba’- the radio that tuned in to Vividh Bharati and its programs like Bhoole Bisre Geet or Binaca Geet mala (India’s very first sponsored radio program!) I learnt the names of singers, lyricists and composers from there, along with the names of people from Jhumri Talaiyya who’d send requests for songs.
And then of course, there was Filmfare- which in those days was a serious magazine devoted to cinema. I used to devour its contents and that’s where I first got hooked onto reading reviews!
So you see, my love affair with movies is almost as old as I am. Today we may be spoiled for choice when it comes to watching movies, we can download, pause, rewind, repeat them as often as we like. But we can never lose ourselves in a movie the way we did then. When each movie was a one-time watch so you knew you had to take in as much of it as you could.
कुछ पाकर खोना है, कुछ खोकर पाना है
जीवन का मतलब तो, आना और जाना है
दो पल के जीवन से, इक उम्र चुरानी है
And that’s the thumbnail sketch of my pyaar ka naghma!
butterfliesonmymindblog 