Bodies sandwithched together. The smell of sweat, pan-spit and beedi smoke. A narrow corridor designed to keep people in. Covered on top to keep them from jumping the Q. Dark, dingy and suffocating. Still an hour for the booking counter to open and another perhaps by the time the long winding and unending row of people in front of us sight the counter. At last the booth is sighted and light streaks in through the exit. The suspense mounts. Are the tickets sold out? Will the counter man shoo us off if we don't have the change? As it often happens, the ticket window is closed rudely and abruptly. The river of people still left in the long narrow space pour out like ants out of a pit. All run after the thin long man who strode out of the ticket booth. He walks fast; almost runs; his head held high; a look of disdain on his face, his hands clutching the ticket books. The crowd goes on pestering him all the time knowing it is useless. The man enters the office room and slams the door shut. We turn away disappointed but not defeated. We rush to the gate and hear the familiar voice of the black marketer, offering the crumpled tickets for double the fare. We linger on; half hoping that he will bring down the price. But as the time draws closer for the start of the film, we thrust into his hands whatever is asked for and wriggle through the dark exit to the already packed, darkened hall, full of thick beedi smoke. Drenched in sweat, taking in the curses and abuses from disembodied voices of the people we step over, we manage to squeeze ourselves into some sort of wooden bench with people on the floor between our legs and people constantly spitting on any vacant space on the floor. Agonizing, suffocating and stinking moments pass by, all eyes glued to a big white patch of cloth mounted high in front of us. People clap and whistle when their matinee idols figure in the advertisement slides projected. The bell rings. People sit on the edge of their seats, alert, craning their necks for a full view of the screen, all the stench and sweat now forgotten in the apprehension. The screen flickers. A blast of music and it comes alive. In an indescribable moment of magic, the shadows on the screen bring in another world which pervades and takes the audience into innumerable moods of happiness, songs, pathos and so on until at the end of three hours, the audience are forced into their squalor once again by the pitiless glare of the lights.

Outside on the street it takes and hour to get used to reality.

The film: A run of the mill commercial film.

Place: A small town in Tamil Nadu.

Time: The 1950s.

India produced the largest number of films then and does so now

I have no reason to believe that despite Cable TV, any other small town in India in the new millennium is markedly different.

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T.Jothi