“So did you see Baahubali ?” asks Bhaskar, my trainer at the gym, perhaps to encourage me to finish my last three push-ups. I totter up, wait for the room to swim into focus and gasp out a “No”. The short conversation stays with me, as I lie down and wait for my heartbeat to slow down.
I am not a great movie buff but most of my friends are. So the WhatsApp is full of the movie, the hero’s six packs and a desperate demand to know why Katappa killed someone. (Or was it someone killed Katappa?) One friend crows about making it to a first-day-first- show in Bengaluru. Another in envy rushes to catch the movie a couple of days later. A stream of photographs about Baahubali saris flood my inbox and, Bhaskar (as I do my squats) tells me that a spanking new Katappa Biriyani place has opened in town. Everyone and their LKG kids who can count know the film raked up obscene amounts of money.
Later that morning, Raju and I listen to songs from Chitchor . We sing along. Both of us watched it in 1976, we realise. I was still in school in Calcutta and Raju had just joined college in Rourkela. We are surprised that it was 40 years ago and we still remember the story, the actors (Amol Palekar and Zarina Wahab) and Yesudas’ unbelievable voice… It was a simple story, set in a village. Zarina Wahab spent most of the movie in a crumpled sari, if I remember right, and Amol Palekar certainly didn’t have six packs.
I can’t remember who asked us to watch the film. There was certainly no tweets or FB posts urging us to do so and we did not sunscribe to film magazines. But still some movies managed to become a craze.
I can remember two of them. One was Bobby (1973). We were on vacation in Chennai and Kitta Mama had promised to take me to watch Bobby . I was beside myself with excitement. I was gong to return to Calcutta and queen it over my friends. I was devastated when my uncle bought tickets for Abhiman instead. I was cold to him for the rest of my holidays. He had no idea what it meant to eat humble pie in school.
The other cult movie was Sholay (1975). That was the first time I heard of 70 mm. If I remember right, it was the Puja holidays and my friend Tani and I had nothing on our mind but getting tickets for the film.
Of course, we did not buy tickets in black. Besides it being wrong, we did not have that kind of pocket money. But we managed to watch it. And came back awestruck. Our hearts beating fast for Amitabh Bachchan and Jaya Bhaduri’s doomed onscreen romance. (Raju helpfully points out that both Amitabh Bachchan and Dharmendra married their leading ladies in real life!). We bought the records of the songs and savoured the experience for long. In fact, I still savour it.
Tani and I also sneaked off to watch another unmemorable film called Anurag (I think it was that) only because they promised to show footage of the Rajesh Khanna-Dimple Kapadia wedding first. We craned our necks to see if we could spot a lovelorn Rishi Kapoor. You know what? I can’t remember if we did. I don’t know, but Anurag must have surely raked in the money because of this brilliant gimmick.
So those were the things that drove us movie buffs in days of yore. Real-life romances, songs, remarkable dialogues. No special effects, no six packs, no size zeros... Sometimes some of us remembered the music directors, but not always.
Jai Ho!
Jai Santoshi Maa , a low-budget film, became as one of the highest-grossing releases of 1975, the year that also saw the release of films like Sholay, Deewar, Chupke Chupke , Dharmatma and Julie . Anita Guha, who played the goddess, had earlier acted in films like Dekh Kabira Roya and Goonj Uthi Shehnai.
