J&K cinemas fail to gain, turn into hospitals

In order to save their assets from becoming ruins, Kashmir Cinema owners have found running them unprofitable, and are busy converting them into hospitals.

If the officials' intention behind vacating the security forces from the cinema buildings they had been occupying in Kashmir was to see the celluloid come to glow once again in Kashmir, those intentions appear to have been defeated.

A makeshift battalion headquarters was recently vacated from the 'Shah Cinema' building in Chattabal area of summer capital Srinagar, obviously to see the Cinema re-start screening Bollywood blockbusters as part of the official policy here to 'reclaim signs of normalcy in Kashmir'.

It must be recalled that at present just one Cinema hall from among over a dozen that did roaring business in Srinagar before the outbreak of the separatist violence, is showing movies and even there the owners are finding it difficult to keep the curtains up.

A suicide militant attack in the vicinity of the 'Neelam Cinema' in September shattered the hopes of both the hardy owners of this cinema as also the audiences that had been braving militant threats to see their favourite movies.

The 'slump in celluloid business' has forced the owners of the 'Shah Cinema' to convert it into a hospital. "We have already made the arrangements for starting a hospital there. You see screening movies has become both dangerous and unprofitable business in the Valley," said Nazir Ahmad, the owner of Shah Cinema.

It must be recalled that 'Khayam Cinema' which did excellent business till 1990 screening 70 millimetre movies with stereophonic sound systems and all the other modern trappings, is already functioning as a charitable heart care facility for the poor locals who cannot afford high costs of heart ailment cure and management available outside Kashmir.

As part of the separatist campaign to target obscenity and vulgar display of women, all the Cinema halls across Kashmir were shutdown in early 1990.

Most of these cinema buildings were later occupied by the security forces, which converted them into makeshift battalion headquarters.

One such cinema hall situated in the heart of city centre Lal Chowk was gutted in a devastating fire in March, 1993 and since then the burnt ruins of the theatre stand as a living testimony of the plight of showbiz in Kashmir.

"If you thought there was no biz like showbiz, you could be gravely mistaken in Kashmir," said Abdul Rehman, 61, who vividly remembered his youth as the gatekeeper in one of the local cinema when locals across age groups thronged cinemas in the Valley.

"I would hold a torch to show seats to the cine-goers and also stop them from smoking inside the cinema hall. We had work right upto our sleeves. Now that is just a long forgotten dream," he said.

It is interesting to note that one elite cinema hall 'The Broadways' located in the highest security cantonment area of the city was gutted in a mysterious fire in 1994. The owners were 'financially assisted' by the state government to reconstruct the cinema and start screening movies. The cinema was reconstructed on a humbler scale than its grand old complex in 1999.

It started showing movies in 1998, but early in 2005 suddenly the owners stopped screening movies and instead started a pub inside where some locals chill it out in the backdrop of the overwhelming presence of the security forces.