by Sudha Ratnam
My mother and my aunt would close kitchen by 12 noon to rush off to the matinee show in the local cinema hall that would begin almost always around two. It was a worrying proposition six decades ago to catch the show without ruffling the routine of a strict household. My grandfather was convinced that cinema was the most deadly diversion that man ever invented and to circumvent his ire was no easy task. But the two ladies were willing to weather any storm to see their favourite actor Sivaji Ganesan in myriad roles, tugging at their heart strings, making them weep copiously. He would dance, sing, mimic and mesmerize them. We, the children, would be back from school at 4.30 in the evening and there would be someone to receive us and offer refreshments. Soon the ladies would return with stars in their eyes and acknowledge our presence in a daze, the tumultuous family story on screen still fresh in their memory. They would quietly whisper to each other, the scene where Sivaji excelled and even did better than his previous film, a re-run that they had seen the week before! Hearing footfalls, they would quieten down but covert plans to slip out of the house after lunch another day would be already afoot.
My father was a film buff too but Sivaji took a pride of place in his heart much lower than the ravishing Greta Garbo or Heidi Lamar. In our early teens I had not seen a single movie of these legendary charmers, so when I once showed him a photograph of the elusive Garbo in a magazine, he broke into a broad grin perhaps reminiscing the Nordic beauty’s role in some film! I rarely saw his mood lighten so easily when he saw our bedecked local artistes, buxom with billowing skirts circling trees under the scorching sun! I remember that my father was not alone in his preference for the alien beauties but my husband often said his father would ensure that he packed in at least three English movies in a week that played in Bombay cinema halls in the forties. A reticent man, no one knew who his favourite leading lady was. He hardly acknowledged the services of our home-spun movie industry that today challenges even the giant Hollywood, dazzling even if momentarily, hordes of youngsters!
When our turn came, cinema was still the most popular entertainment in the late fifties and sixties and my brother would swoon over the Travancore sisters, Lalitha, Padmini and Ragini who danced their way to people’s hearts. He loved ‘Bharatanatyam’ and watched transfixed when the very popular, lissome Vyjayanthimala pirouetted to classical numbers! His taste was slightly erratic with wavering loyalties like when he suddenly became bewitched by the fair sisters of the North. He watched the iconic ‘Mughal-e-Azam at least a few times and soaked in the beauty of Madhubala who played the role of Anarkali! It certainly added a zing to his very boring routine of catching a bus to college and return at six in the evening! A gregarious uncle missed no film of the Bangalore beauty Saroja Devi, then a reigning queen of Tamil movies for a long period.
While another cousin, a loner, still quietly views the vintage ‘Padmini-Sivaji ‘ duo in the silent precincts of his sprawling home, visibly moved by the tribulations that they faced on celluloid years ago!
As for us girls, we were too shy and watchful about articulating our preferences but were overjoyed when an occasional permission came from the higher-ups that allowed us to see a Rock Hudson or Warren Beatty movie safely chaperoned by our brothers and cousins! While a plethora of ‘Mills and Boon’ books conjured sweetly-disturbing dreams in our sedate hearts swishing our hormones, we were extremely cautious about demonstrating our affections or our preference vocally for any swashbuckling hero of the Western world! All the figures remained clearly etched in each one’s heart from the forties to this day and some have even carried their memories to their grave. The furtive pleasure of watching them seemed to make the world remarkably beautiful at that time. To talk about them and the ravages they did to our hearts was a clear no-no. But a youngster, a daughter of my close friend, hearing these nostalgic romantic memories cried impatiently, ‘oh, how repressed times were then, we are so lucky!’ She would understand, better than me and my friend that bit the poet T.S.Eliot wrote in his poem, ‘The Waste Land’:
‘She turns and looks a moment in the glass,
Hardly aware of her departed lover;
Her brain allows one half-formed thought to pass:
“Well, now that’s done, I’m glad it’s over.”
…………………………………………………………………
She smoothes her hair with an automatic hand,
And puts a record on the gramophone.
