The job demanded a lot of precision and a sense of responsibility. Unless there was a power shutdown, no time loss was allowed in the switchover,” Chandan says. The moment one reel got over, I had to start operating the next reel in the other machine. While one reel would run for 17- to 20-odd minutes, I had to keep the other machine ready. The job of a camera operator was backbreaking, and I had to be on my toes to make sure the two machines were in order. “Before my job, I had to take a verbal, written and medical examination conducted by the government to get my licence. Four years back, when Chandan heard that the hall would close down, he felt like being stranded in the epicentre of an earthquake. Sixty-year-old Chandan Datta had joined as a chief camera operator at Grace on College Street on February 10, 1985. The story is no different at most single-screen theatres in the city - Grace, Purno, Ujjawala, Sree have all shut down. Today, all that is just memory,” he says, rubbing his eyes. It’s only after a good 15 minutes that he identifies it as a reel from the Amitabh-Rekha starrer ‘Silsila’. At first glance, it’s difficult to recognize who the stars are. Bishnu uncoils one and holds it against the warm April sunlight filtering through the ventilator. Upstairs in the projection room, nothing much remains, except for some torn bunches of unsold tickets and film reels. But what about that screen? “Maybe someone somewhere will use it for projections in a village…” Bishnu’s voice trails off. Someone told them that a scrap dealer might sell it off to some small-time caterer to make use of as a curtain. The huge curtain in front has also been removed. Mother and son wept like inconsolable babies after the final curtains came down after the last show at the theatre. Each blow of the hammer seemed to strike my heart,” Bishnu says. When they first starting dismantling, I couldn’t even enter the auditorium. And here, they hammered it down in minutes. “A single tile would take 25 days to make. What remains as relics are the sponges, torn from the seats. Even the plaster of Paris tiles from the ceiling were hammered down.
Then the AC machine, transformer and generator. First, the workable machines of the projection room were sold off. In between my household chores, I would catch a few scenes. There wasn’t a single day when I didn’t watch a film. Her husband used to work here as a mason before the hall opened on February 4, 1977. The fire simmers long enough to let the 75-year-old boil some rice as she stares at the empty auditorium.
The wooden frames that weren’t sold off as scrap are now used by Gayatri to light the oven. 1 that once led viewers inside is a small earthen oven.
Today, the theatre can almost be mistaken as a set for Mrinal Sen’s ‘Khandahar’. It brought such a sense of closure,” he smiles wryly, eyes glistening as he walks past the debris, leading the way into what used to once be a favourite entertainment destination for many south Kolkatans. ‘Belaseshe’ is one name I will never forget.
“How ironical that this film should have marked the ‘bela sesh’ (end of days) for the theatre too. This quirk doesn’t escape the 50-year-old Bishnu. The last film to be screened there was ‘Belaseshe’, the Soumitra Chatterjee-Swatilekha Sengupta starrer. In the week before its final closure, a cruel joke would do the rounds. It was at the peak of summer last year - on May 28, to be precise - that Mahua downed its shutters. Last year saw 40 single screen theatres in Bengal closing down. Welcome to the world of abandoned show reels and empty projection rooms. Welcome to the world that can’t match up to the glitz of multiplexes. Welcome to the world of 26 leftover single-screen theatres in Kolkata, which are closing down at a pace that doesn’t care for speed-breakers. Mini, the orphaned cat, shares the roof along with the caretaker-cum-gatekeeper of this south Kolkata cinema that downed shutters last year. While Mini curls up on the chair at night, Bishnu Deb Roy and his mother Gayatri Devi sleep on the floor. Since then, her address is the plastic chair that stands guard in front of the defunct booking counters of Mahua cinema. Days after her birth, her mother was killed in a road accident. Gone with them are a host of matinee memories, writes Priyanka Dasgupta Kolkata: Mini was born two months ago. Since the advent of multiplexes, several iconic cinemas in the city have shut shop, unable to break even.
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