WHILE tracing the history of Nishat Cinema, Asif Noorani in ‘Requiem for a movie house’ (Jan 22) stated: “Nishat was built by Hussain Baig Mohammed, a businessman from what was then Bombay, immediately after partition ... Years later, in 1962, the cinema was bought by Yusuf Mandviwala …”

As I have already mentioned in these columns (Nov 1, 2012): ‘Nishat Cinema and its history’, I repeat that Nishat was not built by Hussain Baig Mohammed; rather it is a pre-partition-era cinema and its original name was Krishna.

Its Hindu owner had got two plots of land right in front of each other on either side of Bunder Road. He got constructed two cinema-houses which were then called bioscope or talkies with the coming of the sound system. He named them Radhey, after his daughter’s name, and Krishna, which was his son’s name.

It was Krishna that was renamed Nishat, while Radhey became Naz after partition when a wave of changing Hindu and English names began.

Kandawallas acquired Nishat because it was adjacent to their head offices in Godrej Kandawalla building. He also had a cinema on Marston Road, named Godeon, rhyming with Odeon by combining initial letters of Godrej with Odeon. Nishat was later given on contract to the owner of Palace Cinema, Hussain Baig Mohammed, by Kandawallas.

In 1963 when Kandawallas needed money to invest in their jeep assembly plant, they sold Nishat to Mandviwalla for Rs1.6m. Since then Nishat Cinema had been under Mandviwalas’ control.

Ghulam M. Dilmurad Baloch
Karachi

Published in Dawn, February 17th, 2015

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