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Once it was Chanakya
Last night, at 9.45 pm, I dreamt I went to Chanakya cinema again... after all these years. I stood by the box-office that sells Rs 30 front stall tickets, writes Mayank Austen Soofi.
Last night, at 9.45 pm, I dreamt I went to Chanakya cinema again... after all these years. I stood by the box-office that sells Rs 30 front stall tickets. For a while I could not see the clerk inside. The window was barred to me. Ticketless, I walked towards the glass door. It was locked. I called in my dream to the cinema security guard, and had no answer. Peering closer through the dirty glass I saw that the theatre was uninhabited.
No crowd was waiting in the foyer. The little frames that should have displayed movie posters gaped forlorn. Then, like all dreamers, I was suddenly possessed with supernatural powers and passed like a spirit through the barrier before me. The path wound away, as it had always done. But as I advanced, I was aware that a change had come upon it. The lobby was empty and unkempt. There were no love couples. No ladies in sari. No screaming children. No happy families. No man in the men’s loo. No popcornwallah on the counter. It was all dust, cobwebs and silence.
The gallery to the front stall was a thread of its former self, with the red carpet gone. There was no thud of Rs 30 footsteps stamping through the door to claim the best seats. I was alone inside (one thousand and seventy-nine more people were needed to make for a houseful show). In the eerie quiet, I sniffed for that familiar popcorn smell, but in vain.
I looked up to see the rich people in the Rs 80 balcony, but no one was there. The air conditioner too was not humming. The projector bulbs were not glowing. I sat down on the chair and listened to it creak as it unfolded. But I was facing... nothing. There was no screen — that thing where I had seen Dil Se (7 times), Kuch Kuch Hota Hain (thrice), and Devdas (twice). Soon, I remembered — in the dream — that Chanakya had shut down way back in 2007.
Few nights ago (this time not in a dream) I was walking past what was Chanakya’s entrance gate. I knew the theatre was history. That it had been taken over by the New Delhi Municipal Council. The news reports had said that a mall was to spring up on its place. But to me, the building was always there. However, that night there was just emptiness.
Chankaya had finally been razed. I don’t know exactly when. The next morning, I logged on to savechanakya.com, the website that was created when the theatre was closed for good. The screen said: The requested URL could not be retrieved.
