Those were the Days

Those were the days, my friend
A film every Sunday….TV for four hours only…cinema forbidden for women…Laaya Lobo explores media consumption habits of some senior citizens.

It’s 1952, and the scent of independence still lurks in the air. However, this independence is for select individuals, and 73-year-old Indumati Dhakan, a resident of Kandivali, and known for her sharp organization skills, isn’t one of them. In a small village in Saurashtra, Gujarat, a young Indumati is forbidden from going to the movie theatre. She is a young unmarried woman and the pleasures of the cinema are forbidden.

In the 1960s, 2500 km away in Kurseong, West Bengal, Usha Kedia, now a published writer and yoga teacher, tells a similar story. She remembers the first time she watched a movie after escaping from her grandfather's watchful gaze.

“We had only one picture hall in the small town, Kurseong, and I went with my aunt without telling anybody. I only told my mom, I am going with Aunty, I have to go. The film was Gumrah (1963, B R Chopra). I remember it very well; it starred Sunil Dutt and Mala Sinha. When I came back, my grandfather heard about it and he called me to his room, and he asked, ‘Child, which film did you see?’ I think I was in class 6 or 7 at that time. We all were really afraid of him. He was really the father figure in the house. I told him, ‘Gumrah.’ He asked, ‘Do you know the meaning of Gumrah?’ I said, ‘No.’ He said, ‘Gum means getting lost, and raah means the way.' He said, ‘Child, it is time for you to choose.’ Now when I think of it, it is very funny. But he actually did believe that I would lose my way if I were to go and see some films.”

After this, Usha Kedia went to the movies only after getting married, with her husband and sometimes her sister-in-law.

Indumati Dhakan too experienced the magic of the big screen after getting married and moving to Mumbai. In 1974, she was exposed to television for the first time.

Photograph by Laaya Lobo

Elizabeth Lobo, 82, is the former primary headmistress of Kendriya Vidyalaya Sangathan 3, Colaba, and Math teacher, and is much loved by her students to this day. She first encountered television in 1972 though it must be said, they weren’t spoiled for choice. Television broadcasts lasted for a few hours in the evening, with a set number of shows. There was a Hindi movie every Sunday, and the news at various intervals, one bulletin in the local language, one in Hindi and the last in English.

Photograph by Laaya Lobo

Dr. Rajendra Kulkarni, a former physicist at BARC, and Bollywood buff, explains how there were three intervals for the news in the day. One in Hindi, the second in English, and the third in Marathi. The television only ran for four hours a day but there was a consensus amongst all interviewees that Chayageet and Chitrahar, compilations of Hindi film songs, were crowd pleasers.

Prakash Shah (name changed to maintain privacy), a businessman and avid movie watcher who makes a point to watch three movies a day, grew up in Vijaypur, Gujarat, had the privilege of being a man and experiencing the world of cinema openly. His village had only one theatre, which in the day would function as a vegetable mart and at night would screen films. The films would come in a box that would be inserted in a machine which then projected the film onto a hanging purdah or white cloth. Unsurprisingly, just like today, there were divisions between various seats. As Shah explains, “Tickets also had divisions at that time. Third-class tickets meant sitting on the floor and cost five annas. Then there were benches which cost ten annas. This was followed by chairs which were called balcony. They cost one and a half rupees.” In another part of the country, the price of tickets as noted by Elizabeth Lobo was, 4 annas and 8 annas which are 25 paise and 50 paise respectively, and the better seats were for one rupee.

While some people like Dr. Kulkarni only watched movies after reading their reviews in the papers, others like Elizabeth Lobo watched documentaries screened at school, and some others like Prakash Shah diligently watched a film every Friday, purely due to his love for them. Some people like Shah were lucky and had friends who owned theatres, guaranteeing them tickets. He recalls, “He used to call me to his office to hang out after work. Then, at around 9:30 pm, we randomly saw parts of different films from the balcony seat. After watching the film, he dropped me back home in his car. Whenever a new movie was released, he kept the first-day last show’s four tickets for me and my friends. It was a ritual we had for the longest time."

Televisions and radios provided a sense of community. They were items of luxury, so those who could afford them tended to share them as well. Some people got it due to their workplace, like Dr. Kulkarni who got a television due to his work with Electronic Corporation of India. Heena Khasim reminisces how everyone would sit around and watch one television or listen to only one radio. Televisions had just been introduced and technological advancement was slow. Dr. Kulkarni talks about how during the first football match screening, they actually missed watching the goal due to the camera not being advanced enough. The leading radio manufacturers at the time were Murphy, His Master's Voice, Philips, and OSLA. While in places like Karnataka, people listened to Radio Ceylon, in Gujarat, Prakash Shah listened to Beenaka Geetmala. AIR was the national radio channel that played all over.

Photograph by Laaya Lobo

Heena Khasim, a social worker and famous for her Biryani and mutton curry despite being a vegetarian says, “Radio was always there. Thus, we listened to the cricket commentary, songs, and all- my mother used to love singing. Everything (including cricket commentary), was covered on the radio. That was the only time pass we had, and it was a nice time pass.”

While the radio was a source of entertainment for some, it provided news for others. Dr Kulkarni says, “Radio was one more source of information. At 9 o'clock, we had news, we never used to miss. I used to switch on that radio news on BBC.” Sometimes they would record radio shows like Chitrahar onto a tape recorder to play back later.

Some places like Saurashtra didn’t have radios at all and when they did finally come, as Indumati Dhakan says, “Jene sagvad hoye, ae lai sakta tha” which translates to, “Those who could afford it, bought it."

When it came to newspapers, local languages were easily available, however, sourcing other languages required people to go to the state borders. “Kannada papers were there, English papers were there, and if at all they wanted papers in Malayalam, Telugu, and all that, then border people used to get that but English and Kannada were easily available,” says Elizabeth Lobo, who hails from Mangalore, Karnataka.

Amongst print media, magazines were incredibly famous, and a lot of them like Reader's Digest came as subscription models. There were also genre-specific magazines like science magazines. Mrs Usha Kedia, a long-time Reader's Digest subscriber says, “It was all-rounder, laughter, jokes and human, uniform, short stories and what happened in your life. There were all kinds of things, it was a mixed package, the adventures, and people, the world of medicine, what was coming out, the latest information was given there.”

The forms of media may have evolved in the last few decades but their purpose has remained unilateral. At the grassroots level media is used to provide information to the masses. However, its bigger purpose is to unite - whether it’s uniting through social media today and connecting people all over the world, or making people physically sit together around a television or radio.