So that became the routine—not the Ahiritolla school that was two stops away, but the rest. Every Monday, Tuesday and Friday—barring special days that included pujos, birthdays and ceremonies—I would land up at the Moitras’. This amounted to crossing the corridor and peering through the Moitra household’s door curtain and then entering. I was being educated at home, a bit like Rabindranath, really, if you come think of it. But my education was to be a couple of notches more radical than the one doled out at the Jorasanko household. I had one great advantage over young, impressionable Rabi Thakur: for me, Abani Chatterjee, the bioscope was close at hand.
To see moving images—of men and women, of elephants and horses, of cities and landscapes, of breaking waves and creeping fires, of made-up objects and creatures—projected on a flat, white screen or wall (which disappears the moment it’s put to use) is a confusion of the senses. The bioscope pictures arrived as a miracle that took place on a regular basis at some improvised space near us.
Whether it was inside converted playhouses or within the gelatinous walls of those travelling tents whose holes and rips required regular stitching, we knew that this was something different. Something beyond a simple projection of light depicting things we knew we weren’t going to see when we stepped out of those old, rudimentary motion picture theatres. And yet, the phantom people on the screen, drained dry of speech and colour, weren’t complete strangers to us. And it turned out we weren’t complete strangers to those phantom people either.
So on that particular evening when I, a sixteen-year-old, by now moderately appreciative of things cinematographic, was caught wet-handed plastering a showcard that proclaimed an evening’s entertainment at the Elphinstone Picture Palace on the walls of the Alochhaya Theatre, I had my future in the pictures already flickering before my eyes.
And why shouldn’t I? The Great Performing Life of Abani Chatterjee had been running day after day, night after night, in the smoky and raucous picture palace of my head for quite some time. Apart from the fantastic Emile Cohl (I had watched his Nothing Is Impossible for Man six times one year, twice from behind the projector), George Méliès and Roscoe Arbuckle, people like Amritlal Bose were becoming proper proper nouns for me. The last name belonged to a local self-styled ‘player, playwright and actor-manager’ whom Shombhu-mama had seen visiting the Elphinstone, successfully pushing Mr Madan to screen his biopics, The Death of Nelson, Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee and Gladstone’s Funeral Procession, short features that weren’t quite as bad as their elegiac tone might suggest.
Years later, I heard about how the first bioscope audience in Paris had swerved and screamed and ducked when a cinematographic train rushed towards them during the screening of the Lumieres’ The Arrival of a Train. The crowd here reacted very differently the day the motion pictures came to town. This Shombhu-mama had overheard Amritlal-babu telling Mr Madan in the office room at the Elphinstone, so it couldn’t have been just a rumour.
‘As Nelson’s carriage creaked along the cobbled streets of London … by creaked, of course, I mean that you could see the creaking … everyone started clapping, whistling, shouting. It was all absolutely spontaneous … although I did recommend having one or two members of the staff start the proceedings and letting everyone take it from there. The stalls at the Star went wild.’
Madan heard him out, listening to the details, calculating ticket prices if and when Elphinstone were to show bioscope shorts between two, maximum three ‘live’ acts—as if motion pictures were apparitions that needed to be quarantined from live acts. While the early bioscopes were shown in between a play and a stage performance, it was now becoming increasingly clear that moving pictures were going to be the main attraction and, very soon, the primary draw. If, at the turn of the century, two shorts ran after a brief comic drama about effeminate husbands and before a rousing performance by Miss Nelly Mountcastle who danced for twenty minutes with her pet python, by the time Shombhu-mama was chief projectionist at the Elphinstone, the bioscope provided the longest segment of the evening’s entertainment.
With theatre in this city becoming increasingly unfit for family consumption, more and more entrepreneurs started to look towards the moving pictures as a substitute rather than a supplement to theatre. The initial razzle-dazzle and mindless hurrahs never vanished, of course. But slowly and surely, the bioscope became less of a carnival and more of a gummy mixture of vaudeville and art. Which was around the time I unofficially joined the Elphinstone Picture Palace as a part-time publicist, thanks to Shombhu-mama.
When the burly Ram Bahadur caught me by the scruff of my neck pasting Elphinstone showcards on Alochhaya walls, I had, for some bowel-churning moments, thought that my reel had finally snapped. With no schoolgoer’s halo to provide me some middle-class relief, an alcohol-soaked father who, for many, was in league with the city’s seditionists fighting a low-intensity war against a well-meaning ruling class, and a mother who was being regularly tasted by a physician, I was ready for the worst. As Ram Bahadur held on to my shirt, I started to think of ways I could get out of the mess. I could play up the fact that my father and mother were a drunkard and an invalid respectively. But that would have been facts already known to Ram Bahadur and the Alochhaya management. And the burly gatekeeper was not paid to show pity.
The other ploy was to blame the seditionists. ‘A man had come to our house and told my uncle that if I didn’t put up these posters on the walls of all the theatres in the city, he would make life very difficult for all of us.’ The only problem with that approach was that neither Pundalik nor A Dead Man’s Child that were being advertised on the showcards was remotely seditious and therefore worth any vague sympathy.
Ram Bahadur didn’t speak a word as he lifted me and carried me around the main entrance of Alochhaya and entered a narrow passageway on the side of the theatre that was so dark that I thought that we had entered a bioscope show. Even at this hour, the entrance was as deserted as a midday village. A door creaked open and I was deposited inside a room that was illuminated just enough for the people inside to conduct basic activities like counting ticket sales and talking about such activities.
A clean-shaven man, who seemed to have his eyes propped up by hoods from below, looked up from his desk as the door opened. A few seconds later, as my eyes had adjusted to the light, I noticed a thin line of hair running between his nose and upper lip.
‘Yes, Ram Bahadur. What is it?’
I staggered into the light, opening my eyes wide and at the same time keeping my eyelids taut enough to give the impression that I was an innocent boy who had been mistakenly hauled up for some petty, silly thing by a mindless ex-wrestler.
‘You’re Tarini Chatterjee’s son, aren’t you?’ he said, pointing the nib of a pen straight towards me.
He knew who I was. That immediately put me at a disadvantage.
‘I caught him putting up bioscope posters on our walls. This isn’t the first time he’s tried to do something like that. The last time round, I let him off with a warning. You remember, when the mem had come and people were giving speeches. But this time, you’ve got to deal with him to teach those bioscope people a lesson!’
Ram Bahadur certainly got his facts right, although I thought he was exaggerating the whole affair of ‘the last time’.
‘So, Abani? Is your uncle still cranking the handle at the Elphinstone?’ Mahesh Bhowmick, the owner of Alochhaya, asked me calmly. A remarkably innocuous question, I thought with relief.
My first entry into Alochhaya was prompted neither by theatre nor by bioscope. It was Bikash who had first caught a glimpse of the showcard as we were taking our usual roundabout way back home from school. I was still going to school then. Alochhaya was not on the way home. But if one wished to delay things a little and hang out for a while after school, there was the triple choice of the pond, the Bohra Muslim cemetery and the Alochhaya theatre.
It wasn’t just one showcard. There were scores of the same poster slapped
around all over the area, some pointlessly pasted over others on light poles, walls, postboxes and shopfronts. The Demand for Home Rule, it read. But what caught our eye was the darkened-to-toast lithographic picture of a lady who stood there in the centre of the showcard, oblivious to all the letters swirling like a pathetically made noose around her. She wore a black dress with frills running down the front, and her hair was done in such a fashion that it could have been mistaken for the frills on her dress.
Her eyes looked away from the viewer. In fact, it wasn’t as if she was looking at anyone or anything at all. Instead, she seemed to be lost looking at an idea, her eyes taking on that slightly unbalanced look of a Lakkhi Owl, a bored but arrogant look that said nothing about what she was seeing. She looked as if she was overlooking rather than looking. But most peculiarly, her left hand (with a large, dark ring on her finger) was raised up to her right breast, a bit higher actually. And that was what made her look so other-worldly and, dare I say, desirable to a sixteen-year-old boy with no real knowledge of the fluttering, flapping inflammatory world of women.
‘It says “All welcome”,’ Rona pointed out.
I couldn’t say anything. I was transfixed by her pose. She looked like one of those divinities whose picture comes attached to a wall calendar that marks not only the days of the week, but also the special days of the year. The mem, however, was prettier, warmer, more approachable than any calendar goddess, and this despite the fact that each and every calendar woman flashes a coquettish smile.
‘If it says everyone is welcome, then we can go in …’ I trailed off as I noticed her curled fingers.
The show was slated for late afternoon. So we came back, Rona and Bikash fabricating some story about going out to watch an annual procession as it passed through the main crossing. (Their parents always seemed to need an explanation for their actions.) The show was not scheduled for the usual theatre hours. Which meant that this would be more than just the usual theatrical performance that we sneaked into from time to time. Alochhaya didn’t show bioscopes. Which meant that The Demand for Home Rule could be—going by its protagonist—a foreign dance drama.
Dance dramas, at least those I had the misfortune of witnessing, left me mentally shivering like a malaria patient. People sang, writhed and pitter-pattered in and out of the stage with the musicians croaking along on their instruments. How this could entertain anyone but the very, very lonely eluded me. But this show promised to be somewhat different. It had a European lady in it and, anticipating a free show at Alochhaya, we hoped for the best. Usually, European actors played in the European theatres. But if Alochhaya had managed to get one, this was bound to be something special that the papers would write about later that week. The woman, I guessed, couldn’t be less than world famous. After all, she didn’t look Anglo; she looked the mem she was.
When children are moderately old enough, they have more than a vague idea of the kind of person they will fall in love with. This image stays with them until one gives up waiting (the duration of waiting being different for different people). I had the image of such a person lodged inside my head. Unfortunately, I still have it at this doddering age. It was the woman on the showcard.
Walking towards Alochhaya, I grew more and more agitated. I was worried that something so alluring would culminate in something toweringly disappointing—like the disappointment that crushes you when you find yourself seated next to an ugly woman. But the poster-woman seemed to be more flesh, more blood than the women whom I had seen either cooking, swabbing, lying prone like death or performing hysterically on stage. This woman could only be of the bioscopes.
‘Are you sure this is open to everyone?’ asked Bikash as we approached the gate.
‘Well, what do you think “All welcome” means?’ snorted Rona.
But Bikash did have a point. The usual crowd going into Alochhaya was a mix of the raucous and the gentlemanly. There were those who came in a gang, loud and all excited, as if their brains had started to malfunction the closer they got to a theatre. Then there was the dignified lot, who either came alone or in a small collective, looking towards the people they considered louts and philistines with pained shame and practised derision.
Today’s crowd was different. It seemed to be formed of the louts and the gentlemen as well as a third type: men who were walking with reserve as if the future of Man was tucked inside their inner pockets. These people, who formed the bulk of the crowd that was entering, walked as if they were more comfortable marching. This made them appear like gentlemen who were trying to hide the fact that they had soiled their undershorts that lay below their astoundingly white dhutis.
‘Odd crowd for a musical,’ said Rona.
‘It’s a demand, not a musical,’ retorted Bikash.
‘What happens in a demand?’
‘I guess people ask for things and …’
‘You think there’ll be songs?’
Despite the slight confusion about what would be on offer, we walked past the heavy, old curtains in the foyer. There was nothing that suggested that there were people who had come with a purpose different from ours. Everyone else was walking in calmly, and the few ushers, usually all energetic with their torches and I-am-the-authority look, simply stood there.
Be that as it may, we did see the towering figure of Ram Bahadur standing in front of one of the two entrances that led into the hall on the ground floor. With his handle-bar moustache and trademark vest-meets-dhuti waistline, he still looked as if he was guarding the mouth of a treasure cove. In a way, it was reassuring.
‘Let’s wait till his end gets a bit more crowded,’ I said, moving towards the side where a serious dark cloud of mosquitoes was hovering above the heads of every person passing under it.
When the right moment arrived—and it always does—we turned our shoulders sideways and melted inside. Considering that Alochhaya was noted for its ‘mature’ productions, this was the first time any of us had ventured into the bowels of the theatre. But I didn’t let the other two know that I, too, was an Alochhaya virgin. After all, they knew that my uncle worked in the Elphinstone, and by virtue of that advantage, all theatres of entertainment, frolic and art were supposed to be familiar to me.
‘Come on then, let’s go to the front,’ I said with mustered authority.
We quietly sat in the third row from the front, close enough from the stage that rose before us like an altar and far enough for three kids in a crowd of grown-ups to be left unnoticed. The house wasn’t full. Neither was it empty. Despite the shutters on the wooden windows letting the afternoon light stream inside a place that usually favours darkness and artificial light, the scattered audience was energetic. Interspersed with coughs and some vendors making their sales pitch, there was a general hubbub that circulated around the theatre, climbing up to the high ceiling like hot air and descending like unconfirmed gossip. It was nearly half past five and the occasional office-goer was creeping in, pushing the curtain aside and settling down for some free entertainment before making his way home.
Up on the stage, the curtains had been left drawn apart. It was as if we had entered in the middle of a scene. There was a medium-sized table with two vases clogged with rajanigandha, and five chairs all lined up in a row. So at least we knew how a ‘demand’ looked: pitifully boring.
As we waited for the show to begin, I looked around. The gentleman next to me glanced towards us and then looked away. I saw him leisurely stub his cigarette out in the small metal drawer attached to the back of the seat in front of him. There were two men in front, the kind responsible for the future of Man, talking away. Or were they actors practising their lines before going up on stage?
‘Tilak is absolutely right. How long do the Moderates expect people to wait? Last year I heard them saying that they were definitely working something out with London. Well, I’ll be damned if it’s ever happening.’
‘But you know why Chittaranjan had to backtrack and grovel so much? Because of people like
Aurobindo Ghose. It’s all very well to talk of direct action and all those things he’s learnt from England. But it doesn’t really help when Tilak is already getting some results with the demand for Home Rule. Now Nivedita’s also talking of Home Rule.’
Why were they sitting in the second row with the audience when they should be on the stage?
‘The question is whether it’s good for us to have Home Rule.’
‘Well, of course, it’s good. We ruling our own country, what else can anyone ask for?’
‘It won’t be people like you and me ruling the country, my friend. Not unless we all become paan-munching businessmen. Think about it. Who are the ones already moving in and doing the sweet talk with the Viceroy? Who are the ones who have their homes and families in the new capital? Who will benefit by Home Rule?’
‘Not us?’
‘No.’
At this point, he looked sideways and lowered his voice.
‘The Lalas! Everything will be taken over by Marwaris! You think they’re not waiting quietly in the wings for Home Rule?’
‘I don’t know. But tell me, how can London take Annie Besant seriously? She’s into theosophy and all those notions about ectoplasm and universal suffrage. How can she seriously convince the Viceroy and the India Office that Home Rule is what is needed when she herself is from London?’
‘Isn’t she Irish?’
‘No, she’s English.’
By this time, some people had walked on to the stage purposefully. The hall, as far as theatre halls go, didn’t have a very high ceiling. But that didn’t in any way hinder the collective murmur around the closed space building up into a collective sound that could have easily been steam-operated. As the stage began to fill up, with one, two, three, four and finally five people, the smoke-flapping sound subsided until all one heard were staccato gunshots that were coughs mortally afraid of silence.
Bioscope Man Page 6