Let me take the attendance..

Ajan­tha,  Ambika,  Ananda,  Anna,  Bal­aji,  Bal­aananda,  Bharathy,  Jayaram,  Jeeva,  Kan­than,  Muruga,  New­tone, Raa­man, Raja, Rathna,  Renuka,  Ruk­mani,  Shan­muga, Venus..

More than 70% of them are absent ! Who are they ? Are they the stu­dents of Thiru.Vi.Ka high school ?

Nope. These were the glo­ri­ous the­atres of Pondicherry a decade ago. The above pic­ture was taken dur­ing the release of Maaveeran. Anandha was the first dual A/c the­atre in Pondy. It’s a small n cel­e­bra­tory town which has got the French her­itage,  wherein arts are val­ued more than any­thing else. Right from the MGR days, there are more fan clubs in Pondicherry com­pared to the den­sity of Tamil­nadu. My rela­tion with Pondicherry started way back in 1986 but I rarely vis­ited that place. Things changed 6 years back and I started vis­it­ing Pondy more fre­quently apart from our famous trip in 2001 [ Hello Kranx.. remem­ber Bala nagamma :) ].

The fall began with Bharathy sesha mahal and Kand­han turn­ing into mar­riage hall and shop­ping com­plex. I am nei­ther inter­ested in what has been erected in that place nor in the rea­sons for the fall of the­atre indus­try in Pondicherry. You name it.. TV, DVDs, inter­net, local cable chan­nels [ 25 local cable chan­nels are there now ! ].. I ‘m not con­cerned. Rather, it dis­turbs me when such big the­atres were/are demol­ished. One of the inter­est­ing agenda of my Pondicherry trips was cin­ema. I had some good friends there to accom­pany me to the­atres. The true Tamil cin­e­mas fan who never cares to stand in queue again imma­te­r­ial of the pre­vios flops or junks we had been through.[ Ji sothap­pi­taar­raa.. Var­alaaru varud­haame.. pinnitaanaam :) ].

I won­der about the the­atre staff and their alter­nate occu­pa­tion for sur­vival. It’s tough for a mid­dle aged oper­a­tor turn­ing into some other work. The same hap­pens in the Tamil movie ‘Veyyil’ where the the­atre oper­a­tor even refuses to get a big sum of money, when the owner decides to demol­ish and sell the the­atre. The oper­a­tor just walks out with tears in eyes. Sim­i­larly, the entire town of Gian­caldo sadly watches the demo­li­tion of Cin­ema Par­adiso which was their part of life, once.

If TV has replaced our enter­tain­ment needs, why we never set­tle down in a sin­gle chan­nel for more than 2 mins ? Bull­doz­ing the­atres don’t just mean a build­ing demo­li­tion but it’s crash­ing the dreams of a big mass. The pic­ture below means a lot for me.

My joy­ful the­atre days..

http://www.pixmonk.com/2009/08/05/daily-4-shows/

http://www.pixmonk.com/2009/08/06/chennai-600029/

–Toto.

Related Posts B

No related posts. B