Readers Write In #635: This and That…

By V Vijaysree

In my Madras childhood, I studied in a girls’ school on Lloyd’s Road – I still shudder if I happen to pass by this building. It looks exactly the same as it did when it sucked the joy out of learning for me, but the street is now called Avvai Shanmugam Salai, and that makes me happy.

Anyone who has watched Avvai Shanmughi knows why the name would elicit a chortle. Desperately casting about for a woman’s name for his madisar mami persona, the Kamalahasan character looks out of the telephone booth, chances upon the street sign,reads it out loud, and then quickly changes it to a feminine form. A lot of thought went into that seemingly small bit of improvisation.

The movie’s title is the actor’s tribute to his mentor T. K. Shanmugam, the theatre legend. Shanmugam had played the role of the woman poet-saint Avvai so brilliantly that he came to be known as “Avvai” Shanmugam. He lived on Lloyds Road in a house called Avvai Agam. One of the other TKS brothers–T.K. Bhagavathi played Ravana in the black-and-white Sampoorna Ramayana if your memory goes that far back.

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I did not know any movie/ theatre lore when I was a schoolgirl but here is a more serious regret — I never once bunked school/college to go watch a film. Nearby was the Safire Theatre Complex,which was apparently India’s first multiplex theatre. When she was in college, my mother had watched “Cleopatra,” Safire’s inaugural film in 1964. Later, she caught some of the other Hollywood blockbusters which were screened there. Safire was a place for young people to be seen in. S. Muthiah the city historian writes.

There were two other theatres in the complex – smaller than the 1000-seater Safire–Emerald, where they screened Hindi and Tamil movies, and finally Blue Diamond, the screen for re-runs. In his book, Chennai, A biography V. Sriram writes that the basement of the Theatre Complex was home to the city’s first nightclub, Nine Gems. Apparently, a young sari-clad Usha Iyer sang in this club before moving on to more prominent stages.The world now knows her as Usha Uthup, Queen of Indian Pop, which is also the title of her memoir.

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These places that I speak of were located in the ambit of Gemini Circle, as was the American Embassy.  Now, I have an American nephew who asks me if he can visit Gemini Studios –but even I haven’t seen those grounds. Besides, I am not sure Gemini Studios was ever like Universal Studios in California, which offers tours.

So, I delved into Asokamitran’s slim book, Fourteen Years with Boss which has the distinguished Tamil writer’s reminiscences of his years at Gemini Studios back in the 1950s, the heyday of studio system in India.The essays in the book were commissioned and published by Pritish Nandy in The Illustrated Weekly in 1984-85.

The “boss” in the title was the owner of Gemini Studios, S. S. Vasan, a friend of Asokamitran’s father. Working in the public relationship department as a young man, the author had observed the goings on in the studio at close quarters. Decades later, he could recall those studio memories and write in his spare style about the people and the movies, which were too full of spectacle — and had too little logic– for his taste.

For instance, Gemini Studios made the movie Insaniyat, which had not one, but two top Hindi actors Dilip Kumar and Dev Anand in the lead and yet the star who stole the show was a highly paid American import — a chimpanzee called Zippy. (Do read this amusing review if you have the time.) The movie, Asokamitran writes, was contracted to play in a theatre in Calcutta, from a certain date, but the theatre owner was in a bit of a dilemma. A debut film by an unknown young Bengali was proving to be unexpectedly popular. Could he extend its run in the theatre by a bit? Vasan, of course, would have none of it, but he procured a copy of that Bengali film – just to see what the fuss was all about.

A copy of the film arrived at Gemini Studios. Asokamitran writes about what happened next: I went to the studio that day in the afternoon to do a bit of prosaic typing. I found the projection theatre open and impulsively entered it and sat on a vacant chair to realize a second later that Vasan and his close associates were watching a film. … The film was something I had known nothing about; I didn’t know the language, but I found myself throbbing with a surge of emotion, such as I had never experienced before. The film was over, but Vasan ordered it to be run again…

 I am sure I wasn’t the only one in the theatre to be so deeply, so completely moved. Vasan’s face revealed nothing but there he was, seeing the film all over again. When the film was finally over, I had to be alone and so I walked all the way back home. That was the film that crossed the path of Insaniyatin Calcutta? It was called Pather Panchali.”

Pather Panchali was, of course, the first movie in Satyajit Ray’s Apu Trilogy. The Indian grocery store owner of The Simpsons is named after the title character of these films.Perhaps, my American nephew, a bit of Bart Simpson himself, might be interested in this bit of trivia. I should also tell him that Ray won an Academy Honorary Award, for “his rare mastery of the art of motion pictures, and of his profound humanitarian outlook, which has had an indelible influence on filmmakers and audiences throughout the world.”

Art house cinema or commercial blockbusters, then or now, film buffs have only wanted just one thing. Whether we watch the movie in a darkened theatre, or at home on a laptop, we want a movie that transports us briefly – a film that makes us throb with emotions we have never experienced before.We want to be deeply and completely moved. After watching a movie, we want to be lost in reflection, briefly oblivious to everything around us. This happens rarely, but when it does happen, we are ever so grateful.

P.S. Also for a site like this which allows us to share our thoughts on films with fellow fans after we come out of that trance.