Let’s not grieve for Elite, but learn a lesson

Sunny Leone wasn’t around back then. This was the late ’80s, and every morning, on our way to school in the tin-can bus, we would wait for the moment we went past Tiger. As we hit

Chowringhee

— past the Tata Centre roundabout that still had tram tracks, the

Park Street

intersection without the flyover, beyond

Jadughar

— we would finally be in front of that fabled theatre. All eyes would turn right, furtively, as we gazed up at the towering, colour-saturated posters of scantily clad men and women doing stuff that scantily clad men and women do. I don’t remember the titles exactly — could be My Demon Lover or Haunted Honeymoon — but I’m sure they peddled cartloads of ’80s smut and horror. The capital A in a large circle glowed like a forbidden Illuminati symbol. I’m sure Bo Derek was in many of the films. Some of us kids would cheekily point to the anatomical details of the protagonists; at times, a senior would smack us round the ears for our impudence.
But the thing is, the posters never led to further fantasies. By the time I was past 18 and tigerish enough to buy a ticket at Tiger, the cinema had long shut down. The posters had withered and vanished, the inside of the cavernous theatre had been converted into a sundry store selling garments at throwaway prices. The tawdry mannequins on the shopfront were a bizarre reminder of those Tarzan-and-Jane billboards. This was the fate of a cinema that would screen Hollywood classics like On the Waterfront and A Streetcar Named Desire back in the ’50s and ’60s.
That’s why the closure of

Elite

and the public outpouring of Calcutta nostalgia is unremarkable and unsurprising. Every time an old theatre shuts down in our city, this maudlin ritual is repeated in newspapers, magazines, blogs and lately, on social media. Let’s face it, there was nothing elite about the theatre in the past two decades at least. The last time I went there — probably 10 years back — they were allowing the audience members to carry drinks mixed with fountain cola back into the theatre in paper cups. I asked around, and was told that the drink-as-you-watch experience was one of the chief attractions of an evening-out at Elite. I don’t blame the poor management for this. They were probably trying the last trick in the book — liquor at your seat — to counter the multiplexes that ferry overpriced popcorn and nachos to your chair. The delivery boys at plexes smile for no reason and speak bad English, but what the hell, the recliner seats are soft enough!

So let’s not grieve for Elite, but learn a lesson. Too many theatres have shut down in the past three decades — Lighthouse, Globe, Metro, New Cinema, Jyoti, Orient, Jamuna, Society, Majestic — and the public chanting of these names will not bring back the Calcutta of our collective memories they represent. Just as crying over Skyroom and Blue Fox will not bring back Park Street of the ’60s. What we need to do now is save the few that are left.

New Empire

— that grand, old lady of Chowringhee — still survives. As do Regal, Paradise and Roxy. What are we doing for these theatres? Where in central Kolkata are the parking lots, clean walkways, lit-up restaurants and above all, the breathing space, to make movie-viewing an enjoyable experience? Where is the social and political will to turn our beloved Chowringhee from an overcrowded, inner-city ghetto into an address for the city to celebrate the arts?
Our remaining cinemas could be the starting point of that revival, for film-watching still remains one of the most identifiable collective social experiences for an urban population. I still remember watching There’s Something About Mary in the New Empire khancha, which was a boxed enclosure above the balcony seats. The scene where Cameron Diaz puts semen on her locks thinking it’s hair gel had the all-male audience hooting in laughter. Or the time I went for Titanic at the Globe. It was raining outside, and by the time the marathon movie got over, we could well have been on that floundering ship. Such was the deluge on Lindsay Street.
Our cinemas, like our old north Kolkata mansions, are part of our built heritage. They stay on in our memory long after the buildings are gone. For decades before it moved to its present address on the EM Bypass, the TOI editorial office used to be on SN Banerjee Road. But every time you needed to explain the location to a cabbie/ visitor/ courier boy, you just said, “It’s next to old Lotus Cinema”, and people would invariably understand. The cinema itself had shut down two decades back, but it was still a collective signpost for this city. Such is the power of our cinemas. Let’s preserve them.