Grant Road is a haven for many flailing single screen theatres

If Salman Khan is menacingly swishing his dagger in the poster of Bandan playing at Alfred Theatre, then in the nearby Shalimar Theatre, Akshay Kumar has moved with the times and is warding off the evil forces with a hyper cool, silver pistol in Saugandh. At Super Cinema, Bhai Bhai is showing and at Nishat, it’s Khalnayak.

A few minutes before noon, the rusty gates outside the cinema halls lining Grant Road reluctantly creak open and a cluster of humanity strolls in, proving that the paint of these single screens might be peeling off, the plastic chairs might give you cramp in your posterior and each stamp of your foot might cause the dust sheathing the floor to billow in an angry cloud but the celluloid heroes housed in these halls have lost none of their glamour. They continue to enthrall with their shiny pistols, bell bottom pants, debonair sideburns and triumphant love affairs.

When this part of the city became a haven for casual labourers from different parts of the country, the bazaar culture was born. Shrines of various faiths took root and prostitutes were welcomed. In 1895, an area was demarcated by the civic authority as entertainment zone and there sprouted the numerous theatres that dot Grant Road.

The cinemas live in a time-warped zone, reveling in the golden age of Hindi cinema, cheerfully oblivious to the porcelain beauty of Katrina Kaif and the tabloid fascination with Abhi-Ash. “We cannot afford new films,” says BP Singh, manager of Nishat Cinema. “Our tickets cost Rs 25. That’s what the labourers who live in this area can afford.”

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