Daily Times

Many people connected with music know that I go for music practice in a hired room in the Metropole Cinema, Lahore.

This cinema does not have latest machinery and has an old movie shown every Friday for a week. The room in the backyard was hired by the duo Ustad Ghulam Shabir Khan and Ustad Ghulam Jaffar Khan for giving teaching lessons to students. They named the room Pakistan Music Centre. After their demise, a few of us, former students, meet there every evening for our riaz (music practice). Senior member Malik Muddasar opens and closes the centre every day in the evening. He is a proficient classical singer.

While entering and leaving the cinema premises, we find a few motorbikes and a car or two; that is the total number of cinemagoers for the evening show. Movies are mostly Shan’s Punjabi ones in which he played the role of a badmash (blackguard) like Sultan Rahi did in his heyday. While parking my car I come across Shaukat, an old vendor who sells daal, Nimko, sawaiyan etc. on a well-covered rehrri (cart). I asked him once how he made money as there were hardly any customers. He replied that he had spent all his life there, and even with low business he could not think of leaving his adda (tabouret) where he commanded respect. He had seen good times there.

Inside the cinema, there are a couple of gatekeepers, a couple of guards, a couple of ticket sellers and a manager. Vendors selling confectionaries, soft drinks and tea also make their earnings during the shows. The backyard houses a workshop with three rooms and an open yard, and all day there are cars that arrive for repairs. A storage place houses a paint shop. In another shop, boilers are repaired. A basement area that had domestic air-conditioning equipment is now used to make upholstery. There are about 50 people whose bread and butter are linked to this business.

In some rooms there are dancing academies and offices of artists like that of the veteran actor Rashid Mahmood. The Azad Theatre folks left their office due to the alleged mistreatment by the management.

All I desire to establish is that the Metropole Cinema apart from the regular cinema business provides occupation to dozens of people affiliated to it in some way. The rent of the hired rooms is probably used for some part of the expenditure of the cinema premises.

In my student days there were many cinemas doing reasonable business on McLeod Road, Abbot Road and Bhatti Gate. I have seen jam-packed cinema halls, tickets being sold in black. I cannot forget when I saw a man climbing on the back of another friend to reach the ticket-selling counter to buy a ticket in the Qaiser, later Moonlight Cinema in 1960s. Now this cinema has been demolished. A cinema on the opposite side, Ritz, has also been demolished. In its last days it exhibited Pushto films. In my childhood, I had seen Khawaja Khurshid Anwar’s ‘Zaher-e-Ishq’ and Vyjantimala’s ‘Bahar’.

The adjoining Palace Cinema where I saw Iqbal Hassan-Naghma starrer ‘Sassi-Punnoo’ has long been demolished and a horrible looking plaza with small shops has taken its place. Going to Abbot Road, Odeon and Capital are still there showing old films but the gigantic Nishat Cinema where I saw old Indian films like ‘Barsaat’ is no more. The Rivoli Cinema near the Lahore Railway Station where I saw many Indian films like ‘Badal’, a Premnath-Madhubala hit, in morning ladies’ show with my sisters, also died its death. People affiliated with their small businesses also became job-less as a corollary of this state of affairs.

‘Akhri Show’ is a Punjabi play staged after a gap of 12 years in GCDC. I remember Soofi Tabbasum’s translation of the Midsummer Night’s Dream titled ‘Sawen Rehn Da Sufna’ staged during GC’s centenary celebrations in 1964. Kudos to all the team members of the ‘Akhri Show’ for successfully highlighting the problems of old cinema and its dying culture

True, the cinema culture has moved from Abbot Road and McLeod Road to posh localities like MM Alam Road, Packages Mall, Nishat Mall, Defence Housing Authority, Township and elsewhere in Lahore. In these places the cost of popcorn is as much as the cost of the ticket. Cinemagoers are mostly fashionable people, girls and boys dressed in western clothes and the educated lot softly laughing at dialogues unlike the crowd in city cinemas. Shops selling eatables are modern with young faces selling their bit. Crowd that is associated with old cinema houses is a misfit there.

This is the background and the theme of the play titled “Akhri Show” (ast show) staged by Government College University Dramatic Club (GCDC) from April 24-26, 2019, written by the famous playwright and novelist Professor Mirza Athar Baig. It is in Punjabi. At the end of the show, Professor Mirza Athar Baig mentioned that the demise of old cinema culture has not been touched before in our theatre; it was a plight he had to exhibit and he found GCDC the best forum for this purpose. A well-knit story set in the courtyard of a cinema called Kings Cinema that has been showing English films, with the intermingling of the vendors, fights, sympathy, caring ably demonstrated by the script and actors. Directed by Irfan Randhawa with art direction by Amna Anwaar Khan, this play communicated the message elaborated earlier. The project has been patronised by Vice Chancellor Dr Hassan Ameer Shah, a physicist and an art lover.

A discussion on culture takes place between the editor of Sunday News newspaper, Rehmani and two journalists, Tariq, who thinks everything is absurd, and a female journalist, Zara, who is more keen to dig for a story, not realising that technological advancement has brought forth the corporate culture that outweighs all traditional manifestations of culture. The duo sets out to meet the manager and staff of the Kings Cinema, and come across Bashir the gate-keeper, played by GCDC President HM Najamul Saqib; Basheer is the oldest employee of the cinema, and has been on the selling-booth for two decades. He is found to be more worried about the bread and butter of the boiled eggs-seller lad Niamo, the confectioner-seller lad Aslam, the naan-kebab seller Tufail, an old beggar with a young daughter Peeno and Shauka, the pickpocket. The roles of the ambitious owner who desires to demolish the cinema and his recently returned-from-abroad son Agha Jabbar and Jamshed Agha are played by Afaq Imran and M Daud Khan respectively, the latter role highlighting a gora instinct and pronunciation.

The people connected to the cinema discuss among themselves on how to approach the son for some consideration for their future; the son is incidentally more interested in flirting with the female journalist. The dialogues of Baba, Peeno’s father, “Paala bara lagda aye” (I feel very cold) and “Makha shall bring him a loi (blanket) received huge applause in the play. Makha finally does bring the blanket. Shauka is lured by Mooda to abduct Peeno for selling to Madam, a female procurer. Mooda is constantly followed by two policemen, adding humour to the script, Arshad Halwaldar and Amjad Constable. Peeno confides in Shauka how when was compelled to go in the streets for begging due to ill-treatment by women to whose house she went for work. One such baji had even burnt her arm by pressing hot spoons to her skin. Shauka, visibly moved, decides not to abduct her and asks for more money from Mooda the badmash to stall him until the police comes and catches Mooda red-handed. Shauka after having pickpocketing a wallet full of money during the commotion distributes the money among everyone, buys clothes for Baba from lande-walla Munawar and sings “Sala main toh sahib ban gaya” (I am a gentleman now), a famous Dilip Kumar song. Shauka and Peeno unite for a better living.

“Akhri Show” is a Punjabi play staged after a gap of 12 years in GCDC. I remember Soofi Tabbasum’s translation of the Midsummer Night’s Dream titled “Sawen Rehn Da Sufna” staged during GC’s centenary celebrations in 1964. Kudos to all the team members of the “Akhri Show” for successfully highlighting the problems of old cinema and its dying culture.

The writer is the recipient of the prestigious Pride of Performance award. He can be reached at doc_amjad@hotmail.com