Screens through the ages

Bringing down single screen theatres to dust in Bengaluru, though expected, came as a jolt to many of us who are children of the soil, so to speak. It brought back so many memories. For a laid back city in the 70’s and 80’s (yes, unbelievably so!) movies were the only weekly outings that were exciting and fun. The theatres that lined majestically (pun intended) on the road named after the founder of the city of boiled beans, catered largely to the Hindi and regional movie buffs. If tickets were not pre-booked, and were not available even after standing in long-winding queues, no need for a movie buffs to be disappointed; he could always jump to the next theatre, or the next, in the row to choose one to watch. the English movie fans thronged to theatres scattered around central areas.

The great divide of the City and Cantonment had an overlapping of movie goers though, in keeping with the cosmopolitan nature of our metro. We took great pride in being the first city to have a 3-theatre complex, mini theatres and one with an escalator.

Ours was one of the very few cities privileged to have a drive-in-cinema experience as well, with movies extending into picnics when we took our own food, mats and folding chairs along.

Surprisingly, the 3-class divide of tickets into front and back rows, and the exclusive balcony has now merged into one common elite class irrespective of proximity to the big screen in multiplexes with their sky-rocketing costs of tickets and snacks.

Those were the days! Bengaluru did not even have television then. We got our own black and white TV sets in the early 80’s and our own TV station much later. The great unifier, Doordarshan with its solo channel of limited timings, brought not just families but also their neighbours together to watch movies and epics on Sundays. Setting up of antennae on the terraces of independent houses announced the addition of the idiot box in households. Slowly the channels multiplied – spoiling us for choice and so did the screens.

Now, our mobile devices have replaced a long list of things: books, calendars, cameras, calculators, clocks, compasses, diaries, dictionaries, directories, encyclopaedias, notepads, radio, theatres, TVs, and typewriters.

There is hardly any sharing of visual or audio content – each to their own, eyes glued to their respective screens and ear plugs in place, so symbolic of our self-centredness. Our world has shrunk to the size of our palms quite literally and the younger generation believes the pre-mobile era was the primitive dark ages.

All this is a mandatory off-shoot of technological progress I guess and life in general has improved and become easy; but I miss the good old days of non-dependence on technology and acknowledge with a heavy heart though, that time is irreversible indeed!