I wasn’t sure what to expect when I recently walked down the Bellasis Road to Kamathipura. I was very conscious, a little nervous, excited and at the same time afraid to ask anyone for directions. Whichever way I looked, I could hear the thoughts echoing, “I know why you are going there…”
I went up to a paanwala, and after a few puffs of a cigarette and a brief chat, I gathered the strength to ask him for directions to Alexandra Cinema. Five years ago, when two young college students had asked the same question, they could feel the eyes looking at them with a knowing smile. “Jawani ka josh!” one of them would have said. This time however, no suspicions were raised, I felt relieved.
At the time, Alexandra Cinema in Kamathipura was the subject of our college project. “Get me all the details,” the professor had said and so, we did every possible thing we could to gather information. What came to light took our breath away.
It was hard to believe that this dilapidated structure, with red clay roof tiles and moss-laden walls, with prostitutes thronging the entire area, was in fact one of the oldest single screen theatres in the country. The rich history of Alexandra Cinema had me moved.
In 1914, Ardeshir M. Irani and Abdulally Esoofally, the founders of the Imperial Film Company bought the Alexandra Cinema. They re-launched it in 1918. The Bombay Chronicle ran a few teasers, which called the theatre “a new star”. Another ad said, “A visit will give you that rosy mood which you expect after a day’s worry.”
The words didn’t lie as the theatre provided additional comfort to all the British soldiers who visited the official “comfort zone” during that era. As I walked down the road, all I could think of was Dorothy Phillips in Once to Every Women (1920) or Geraldine Farrar in The Woman And the Puppet (1920).
Over the years, the films have remained more or less about sex, infidelity and love. When I visited the theatre in 2007, it ran five shows — the morning show where it would screen A-rated B-grade Hollywood films, and the rest of the shows (12 pm, 3 pm, 6 pm and 9 pm) would be old Hindi films. One could still catch the Sanjay Dutt and Mithun Chakraborty-starrer Ilaaka or the Sunny Deol-starrer Ghayal. At `15 for a seat in the stall, the ticket prices were very low.
I hoped to catch one of these showings once again, but I was scared too. What if the theatre was gone? Just a few days ago I had read a story about how Bellasis Road was slowly emerging as an attractive option for builders to redevelop.
In 2001,the police had reportedly raided the theatre after it received complaints of porn films being screened. Marred by controversy, a lack of patronage, poor finances, unstable ownership and bad management, Alexandra Cinema was now an old dying structure, waiting for the end.
My trail of thoughts came to a halt as soon I reached the theatre. The Maharashtra College still stood tall on the opposite end of the road, the Muslim doctor, Dr Mustafaji Bhopalwala, who ran his clinic on the ground floor of the theatre was still there, the hair saloon was still open and the small café which provided all its patrons with hot chai and vadapav had managed to survive, but Alexandra Cinema had undergone a remarkable change.
Freshly-painted white walls replaced the moss-laden walls; a wall of concrete blocked the booking window; a front gate that welcomed every patron with a warning — Film dekhne aaye sabhi darshakon se nivedan hai ki aap sabhi hamein sahyog den (By Order) — was suddenly missing. Instead, I was greeted with a harsh message by a bare-chested old man in his striped shorts and a security guard sitting in front of the gate. “Kya chahiye?” he mumbled.
The theatre had shut down in 2007. All that was left of it was a sign that read “Alexandra Cinema”. It wasn’t much relief to realise that the year the Alexandra came into my life was the same year it took its last breath.
Once the “new star” of Kamathipura, the Alexandra Cinema, is now a mosque, where Muslims pray five times a day. Nobody knows what is the future of Alexandra Cinema is going to be like. But whatever it will finally be, in the present it was paradoxical to see that the theatre, which once supposedly screened porn films, had now become a place of worship. Or maybe that’s what the Alexandra Cinema always was — a place of worship!