The Theatres of Thiruvananthapuram, Part 1

Big screens, blurred memories

I’ve been wanting to pen down my unreliable memories of the cinema halls in Trivandrum (locally referred to as theatres) for a long time, but the sheer amount of recollection — and the writing effort — involved kept putting me off.

Then, an idea struck me while I was sitting in an auto, stewing in a traffic jam. (Side note: I’ve realised that nowadays I mostly think about writing when I’m in cabs and autos.) Why not make it a series? That way, I could even take eighty-four years to write it.

And with that, here we are — the first episode is called…

THE BIG TV

In the 2000s, aka the aughts, I lived opposite AJ Hall in Kumarapuram for a few years. The auditorium was predominantly used for weddings, and on some days it doubled as a Pentecostal prayer hall. There would be dhinchak Hallelujah music blaring over the speakers, and women in Ujala bluish-white sarees would sometimes drop by our house after their prayer meetings to spread the word of Jesus and sell Christian motivational posters. My mother, being an old Sunday School top performer, would get very competitive and quote the Bible right back at them.

But what does any of this have to do with movie theaters? Turns out, people who lived in the area in the late 80s — this includes my parents and most of Achan's side of the family — knew AJ Hall by another name and function.

AJ Hall used to be called Simi Theatre, and it was one of the big movie halls on the outskirts of Trivandrum city. From what I gathered, like Pattom Kalpana and Pettah Karthikeya in the 90s, Simi mostly screened movies that had already finished their first run in one of the major theatres in the city.

Unreliable suburban folklore has it that the theatre closed down after some incident involving Simi, the owner's daughter. The truth is, I don’t know what really happened — or if anything happened at all. Maybe the theatre shutting was just a business decision. But unfortunately, that’s how rumour mills work.

Anyway, Simi Theatre was shut for most of the 90s and the early aughts. And in the larger picture of Trivandrum’s cinema hall scene — or its popular history — it doesn't seem to hold a particularly significant place.

So, why write about it?

Simi Theatre was, allegedly, where Amma and my dad’s nieces took me as a two-year-old to watch my first movie in a cinema hall. And that movie was none other than the legendary Chithram, directed by Priyadarshan and starring Mohanlal.

Although my leanings in later years have been towards Mammootty, and I have mixed feelings about Priyadarshan, Chithram is a fine specimen of Malayalam cinema. Apart from making you laugh until your stomach hurts, it has peppy music that makes you want to go frolicking in the hills, a heroine who actually has a story and growth arc, Mohanlal running with a shawl flapping in the wind through a pine forest — an essential element of any yesteryear Mohanlal-Priyadarshan movie — and the most heart-wrenching ending that makes you want to believe in yearning as a way to express love.

Of course, I remember all these things from my many rewatchings of Chithram — I was only two years old during my first viewing. But legend has it that when I saw the big screen at Simi, I exclaimed, “Enthoru valiya TV (such a big TV),” and the audience burst out laughing (probably thinking, what a country baby).

And when the movie ended, my mother claims I loudly said, “TV off aayi,” thus bringing some cheer to the people who had just had their hearts broken by Priyadarshan. But I’ve heard this story so many times that my brain has probably reconstructed it as an actual memory. I almost remember it happening — which is a good thing, because my first real memory of a theatre experience is Mohanlal’s Uncle Bun, and that was a truly weird cinematic experience.

I don’t remember where I watched Uncle Bun, but it would’ve most likely been Sree Kumar theatre, because back then they seemed to have a monopoly on all the first releases of Mohanlal movies. Sree Kumar was also perhaps the most important theatre in Trivandrum at the time, because — without exception — it used to be featured first in all the newspapers for movie listings in the city.

Let’s talk about Sree Kumar in the next part (if that happens, hu hu hu).