A Trip to a cinema hall in India usually means a three-hour break from the real troubles of everyday life. In Srinagar it merely reinforces them.

Srinagar has just one movie hall—Neelam—and even that looks more like a war movie set than a place of entertainment. Nine months ago, fidayeens stormed this theatre, killing a militant and injuring a constable. Security at Neelam was immediately stepped up even though it had already been given protection by security forces since it was the first theatre that had defied militants’ threat and decided to screen Bollywood movies. Srinagar’s nine theatres all closed in 1990 after an order issued by militants.

in the years that have followed, watching a film in the darkness of a cinema hall has become a novel experience. There is a whole generation in the Valley that’s never experienced it.

THIS week Neelam is showing Fanaa. There are barricades all around. A security force man keeps a close watch from the hole of a bunker, the barrel of his gun sticking out ominously. The theatre is covered by long tin sheets. Spirals of barbed wire are spread all around, put up to prevent a suicide bomber from coming in.

The list of dissimilarities between Neelam and other theatres in the country is endless. Neelam doesn’t even advertise its releases. There is just one film hoarding. ‘‘Those days (before 1989) I used to make 70-80 film hoardings in a day,’’ remembers 50-year-old Abdul Rashid, a painter. ‘‘I had a staff of 4-5 painters. But now everybody has taken to different jobs.’’ Rashid’s workload has decreased to two days in a week now.

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