August 15, 2004

One by one, famous cinema houses in Karachi are closing down. This is one more blow to the dwellers of the city who are already starved of entertainment opportunities

IN the last couple of decades, Karachi has gone through many transformations. One of them is a marked decrease in the social activities of its citizens, which does not augur well for the very fabric of society.

When recently I read a news item regarding the temporary closure of one of Karachi’s famous cinema houses, Nishat, I turned extremely sad. Just a week before that I had made a plan with all my colleagues at the Sindh Government Qatar Hospital, Karachi, that we would watch a movie at Nishat cinema together. But it was not to be. Like many other cinema halls in the city, Nishat may cease to exist in the near future.

It was depressing, frustrating and very disappointing. But with so many other disappointments, chances are that the issue will also be forgotten in no time. Vintage Karachi is losing its famous landmarks, one by one. And this is largely because of crass negligence and irresponsible behaviour of its citizens.

The builders mafia in collaboration with the Cantonment Board, the Karachi Building Control Authority and the Sindh Government has stripped the city of its charm. It has been able to turn the city into a jungle where people have lost their intrinsic human traits, making the very foundation of the magapolis weaker and weaker by the minute. It’s a dangerous scenario that needs special attention.

Over the years, people have become arrogant, ruthless, selfish, and bigots. These are the attributes that could not be associated with Karachiites when Pakistan came into being. It was then a peaceful city, whose denizens revelled in tranquillity. Respect for one another was the hallmark of men and women at the time. Not just that, as far as environment was concerned, Karachi, particularly during the British rule, used to be the cleanest city of the subcontinent. That’s why it was often labelled “Asia’s Paris”.

Let’s get to the main business. I was introduced to the English cinema by my English teacher at the Jamia Millia College, Prof Abid Khan (many students used to call him ‘the tall man from Patna city’). He was a great teacher who had tremendous command over his subject. After meeting me, he immediately realized that my proficiency in English was very poor. He advised me to read the editorials that were published in Daily Dawn. In fact, he got in touch with my father and asked him to subscribe the newspaper in order to make sure that his children read it on a regular basis. Despite his efforts, I was not able to speak English and pronounce certain words correctly. (I am still learning as far as command over the language is concerned).

One day he told me that he had bought three tickets to a new movie Gone with the wind, which was being screened at Capital cinema. The tickets were for me and two other students, whose command over English was nothing to write home about. Capital cinema was located in Saddar.

In spite of the fact that we were somewhat embarrassed by the idea that we had to watch an English film to improve our English, we thoroughly enjoyed the film and the experience turned out to be pretty amazing. During the interval we had soft drinks and exchanged notes about the language that the actors were conversing in. It was very enlightening.

Subsequently, I got to see many other English movies courtesy Prof Abid Khan in different cinema halls of Karachi. I have no qualms in saying that back then cinema houses in Karachi played an important role in our lives. Be it the halls that screened Urdu films or the ones that ran international projects, they were all very good.

These days, we hardly have teachers like Prof Abid Khan and not dissimilar is the case with cinema halls. First we lost Palace cinema; then Rex, Reno, Lighthouse, Paradise, Capital, Bambino, Star, Regal, Rio, Plaza, Qismat, Talkies and Naz ceased to exist. And now Nishat cinema could soon be part of our cultural history.

I still vividly remember my schoolgoing days, when my family and friends would go to cinema houses as part of their recreational activities. Seheli, Arman, Tauba, Mera Kia Qasoor and Sangam were some of the famous movies of those days. It was always an enjoyable occasion for children and people living in the city with limited pubic entertainment facilities. There used to be special morning shows for women in Plaza, Naz and Nishat cinemas. The tickets to morning shows would be less expensive than the usual ones. I also remember special shows of some English and Urdu movies that were held for students of schools, colleges and universities. Students, accompanied by their teachers, would love to visit cinema houses. Bedari was one movie which was screened for many months. It was thoroughly enjoyed by students at the time and they discussed the subject matter of the film in detail amongst themselves. On Sundays, young people from other parts of the country living alone in Karachi or with their friends would invariably come to cinema houses. Afterwards, they slaked their appetites by gorging themselves on delicious food items available on the Burns Road, Saddar, Bolton Market and Kharadar. They commuted by trams of the Muhammadi Tram Company and looked in on the Frere Gardens, the Gandhi Garden (zoo) or go to Kemari and Manora to have a good time. The situation could be compared to England, where Pakistani students, for recreational purposes, go to Covent Garden to have fun. On Sunday, factory worker and labourers also thronged to cinema halls.

There were certain cinemas that ran only English movies. Some famous movies at the time were Wuthering Heights, Guns of Navaron, Sansabastien, Mad, Mad, Mad World, Collector and Ryan’s Daughter.

In a way the cinema halls were visited by different segments of society at different times in the week. As mentioned earlier, some cinema halls used to show only English movies while some others were famous just for Urdu biopics. Apart from that, there were a few that only screened Punjabi, Sindhi and Pushto movies.

As the population of Karachi burgeoned to a reasonable extent, the number of cinema halls in the city also increased. Every area in the city had some kind of recreational facility comprising parks and cinemas. Arshi, Firdous, Nairang, Relax, Novelty, Liberty, Society, Dilshad, Regents, Piccadilly, Rialto, Majestic, Taj Mahal, Filmistan, Shabistan, Kohinoor, Khayam, Ritz, Kumar, Qaiser, Naushad, Rivali, Eroz, Odeon, Godeon, Fleet Club, Shalimar, Chaman and Hollywood were the famous cinema halls in those days. They covered areas from Landhi to Kemari.

I remember watching a movie in the SITE area after attending a May Day function in front of a factory. We, the students of the Dow Medical College and the University of Karachi, had gone to attend a May Day meeting. Later on, we decided to go and watch a movie in an open air theatre. It was great fun to sit in a cinema hall with minimum facilities. The labour force of the local area, the people working on daily wages and some families were also there to have fun. I can still recall the movie; it was entitled Zarqa.

There were some cinemas that shared movies amongst each other. The arrangements were made in such a way that the first movie usually started in the early hours of the day and a man on a scooter would take the first reel to another cinema hall, where the movie would start a tad late. He would then go back to bring the second reel so that the prints carried on running on the projector.

I still wonder why those men rode scooters instead of motorcycles. But the system was not without its share of mishaps. Sometimes, for one reason or another, (power failure or if the scooter broke down etc), the second and third reel would never arrive and cinema hall owners would give back the cine-goers the amount that they had spent on tickets. At the time, even the cinema owners had respect for citizens and were committed to their clients.

In the ‘60s and the ‘70s, Karachi had eight open air cinema halls. They were situated in the relatively downtrodden areas of Karachi, where tickets could be bought for cheaper prices compared to cinemas in the main city. These cinemas boasted of no facilities that the others did. There were no fans in the halls and the audiences had to sit through a film in humid conditions. The show, mostly comprising old films, normally started at dusk. This inexpensive way of having fun was something special for people living in the slums of Karachi.

Small theatres like Scala and Princes had their own importance amongst local cine-buffs. Only selective movies, including the so-called art movies from some foreign countries, were shown in these theatres. Sometime these halls used to show a few Pakistani family movies too, which the middle class section of our society was very fond of. Educated families would come to these theatres in big numbers. But that tradition is also over now.

Here it must be mentioned that in those days a film festival, in which only foreign films were shown, was a major event associated with Karachi city. Usually the movies from the socialist countries would be screened for seven to 10 days during the event. I remember watching some very good movies from Poland, Romania, Mongalia and the then USSR. Films from Turkey, Egypt and Iran were put on display in a different festival.

Another successful feature of the cinema industry were the drive-in facilities. There used to be a drive-in cinema on the old Dalmia Road, which was always choc-a-block with movie lovers whenever it ran a film. I remember the very first picture that I saw in the drive-in cinema. Its title was Shock Corridors, a story of some psycho patients. It was different kind of fun, as watching a film in an open-air atmosphere was something quite new to me.

Before the 1965 war, some of Karachi’s cinema halls were permitted to screen Indian movies. The last Indian movie which I saw in Karachi was Mahal. It was shown at Taj Mahal cinema on the Bunder Road. The movie was a box-office hit and did great business in the city. I think screening of latest Indian movies was always banned in Pakistan. Until 1965 only old movies had the permission for screening. But during the 1965 war the ban became general and no Indian movies were allowed for public viewing in Pakistan.

All that has now passed and there’s nothing left that could be used as a means for entertainment. I wonder why Karachiites have become averse to art and cultural activities that provide good entertainment, and to a certain extent didactic value. Drama, street theatre, school theatre and cinemas have lost their charm. These days our youth has no direction to move in, and spending time at cyber cafes seem to be the only option left for them. Students at different colleges and universities have no sense of entertainment, which leads to a noticeable lack of respect for a number of things.

All the major metropolises of the world like Tokyo, Beijing, Kolkata, Cairo, London and New York have many facilities where their denizens as well as visitors have a good time. Cineplexes are one of them. Such things also add colour to the cities.

If Nishat cinema in Karachi closes down, it will mark the end of a glittering chapter of Karachi’s civic history. It is understandable that the crisis through which the Pakistani film industry is passing makes it very difficult for cinema owners to run them smoothly. Nishat cinema is the victim of such circumstances and the remaining cinema houses might suffer the same fate if nothing concrete is done to rectify the situation.

I wonder what the city government’s understanding of the situation is. It’s time it did something substantial to make the city a worthwhile place for everyone who lives here. And it’s time the government created an environment where every law-abiding citizen could play its positive role in society.