“Memories. You are talking about memories …” – from The Blade Runner
Growing up in 70s and 80s in Tamil Nadu, main entertainments were movies followed by festivals and books. Vacations during school annual holidays means attending marriage functions in hot summer, scorching heat. Going to movies were always family events. I carry some of the wonderful memories from those decades. Occasions and events got associated with movies we watched, which theater and which place. I don’t exactly remember which is the first movie I watched but doing some deep search through visual section of the brain I guess it may be Bharata Vilas at Thirunagar, Madurai. Grainy images of Sakka podu podu raja and Indhiya nadu en veedu song sequences do frequently pop up in my dreams. I am sure there may be movies from earlier years but don’t have any memories of it!! There are images of scenes from the movie Gauravam, the chess board song Neeyum Naanuma, from the same period. Watching Neeyum Naanuma song video now, I wonder what would have gone through my mind at that age – scared, traumatized, or just bored!! Didn’t sleep through though, memories are the proof of that (unless they were implanted). My best guess is these must be from my first grade. By 4th grade we moved to a village in Kanyakumari district. Movie outings continued, limited to Tamil and few Malayalam movies – since the district shared border with Trivandrum. Little or no other language movies. We travelled to Nagercoil, district headquarters, to watch Sholay, my first Hindi movie, at Rajesh theater.
End of my 6th grade we moved to Nagercoil. Thanks to circulation library we got our hands on most to all of the Tamil magazines, weeklies / biweeklies / fortnightlies / monthlies. Vikatan, Kumudham, Kungumam, Raani, Kalkandu, Thughlaq, Bommai, Pesum Padam. Kalki and Kalaimagal – as children we stayed away from these two. Few more like Gnaboomi and Vannathirai – to cover both ends of the spectrum!! I got introduced to writers Sujatha, Rajesh Kumar, Saavi, Stella Bruce, Geetha Bennett and the list goes on. I read topics of my interest from every one of them. What I looked forward to every week were the series on world cinema which appeared in few magazines – don’t recollect the names, may be Bommai / Pesum Padam / Saavi / Kalkandu. Randor Guy and Theodore Baskaran were the prominent names followed by Sujatha and maybe Lena Tamilvanan who wrote about cinema. Magazines like Vikatan and Kumudham would review blockbuster foreign movies, movies that ran successfully in Chennai. These writers introduced me to World Cinema. Somewhere in my brain wires got connected that lit my interest in English movies. When I mention English, that includes French and Italian too!! Till that time, I haven’t watched a single English movie. World movies rarely make it to theaters in Nagercoil. I made note of the names of movies I should watch if at all they make it to nearby movie hall.
To read rest of the post click this link: Readers Write In #939: Reminiscing: Fear Over The City