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The scenes inside some theatres are growing more and more scary, scarier than the scariest of horror film. They have almost started giving me the shivers. I belong to a generation when people stood in serpentine queues days before the films released, especially if they were films starring Dilip Kumar, Raj Kapoor or Dev Anand, Dharmendra, Rajesh Khanna or an Amitabh Bachchan, or films made by Raj Kapoor or Yash Chopra or even Subhash Ghai. I remember the last time I stood in one such queue was for hours in the sun before I could reach the booking counter and get hold of a ticket was for Yash Chopra's Dil Toh Pagal Hai. Those days getting your hands on a ticket and grasping it in your hand and putting it in your purse was life holding a passport to a paradise on earth. And the atmosphere, the scenes inside the theatres were the scenes which even the Gods are missing today. There were people on every seat in every row. The theatres used to be packed and there were hundreds waiting for those "extras” outside. The audience lived in every moment of the film. They fell in love with the characters in the film. They loved with them, they lived with them, they laughed with them, they cried with them, they were one with all that was happening in the story. They were out of this world and all the grin realities of every day life. There were times when they were not satisfied seeing some films just once. They saw them again and again because there was that spark, the brilliant performances and the music which attracted them and brought them back to the theatre to enjoy and lived all those moments all over again. That is what films like Hum Aapke Hain Kaun and Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge did the last time and that was eleven years ago and a film like DDLJ is still running at the Maratha Mandir in Mumbai even after six hundred weeks!

Like there was this time when I took my family to see Amol Palekar's latest masterpiece, a film called Quest, ambitiously made in English. I took them because I was invited by Mrinal Kulkarni, a talented actress who was the leading lady of the film. We were three of a family, my wife my daughter and me. There was a leading writer-filmmaker and his wife who were also invited by Mrinal and we kept waiting for more people to come in. Till one haggard-looking man walked in and sat in a corner and the film started with just the six of us in a huge hall. The lonely man looked as if he had unknowingly landed there from some other planet. He was growing restless after seeing the first few explicit scenes of homosexuality, he waited for a while and then quietly walked out of the hall leaving just the five of us in a hall which was now looking deserted. We suffered in silence all through the film, all for the love and respect for Mrinal, the actress who was doing her best as usual. This was not our first experience with an Amol Palekar film. Years ago we saw Thodasa Roomani Ho Jayen with Nana Patekar in the key roles, in a massive theatre in Pune and again there were just six people in the theatres. I thought it was a rare record for a filmmaker like Amol. We spent the rest of the evening talking about the new version of the national anthem, created by Bharatbala Production with Lata Mangeshkar, Asha Bhonsle, Pandit Bhimsen Joshi, S.P. Balasubramaniam, Jagjit Singh, Kavita Krishnamurthi, Dr. Bhupen Hazarika, Sukhwinder Singh and above all A.R. Rahman. The new version sung with their hearts and soul swelled the Indian in us and I was sure it was doing the same to millions of other Indians. If there was one reason why I would think of going to a theatre again was just to stand up and listen to this version of the Jana Gana Mana I decided.

I remember seeing two films made by the genius of Ram Gopal Varma, also known as a Factory called R.G.V something like the initials engraved on every brick in a brick-kiln. The first was a film called Darna Mana Hain to fear is forbidden and the second Darna Zaroori Hain to fear is necessary. I went not because I wanted to see the film but because I wanted to test myself, because I was told the films were spooky ghost stories and I was a patient of fear psychosis those days. I had two friends to escort me should I fall a prey to fear. And how I laughed all through the film till I became a source of disturbance for the rest of the audience and my escorts were more scared than me. At the end of both the films I felt some strange soothing coming all over me. My rollicking experience of watching these two films about fear had some how cured me of my fear phobia and I was looking for R.G.V to thank him for being such a great psychiatrist who could do what many other psychiatrists could not do for me. I was in a privileged crowd of fifteen young collegians who had bunked classes to see the film. This group of young men and women had no respect for fear and had walked out of the theatre telling other friends not to see the films because of there was nothing to see in them and the next shows I was told had less than ten people in the theatres!

And if what I saw happening at a show of R.G.V's much hyped Nishabd can happen, I as an optimist can only see a very bleak future for Hindi films and filmmaker who are treated like master of their medium till the promos and teasers of their films are shown on television. It is a very different story when most of their films are released. I saw Nishabd in a multiplex where there were just twelve people in the audience at the first show on the first day. And this, in spite of the fact that the multiplex was offering one ticket free with every ticket bought which included Pepsi and Pop Corn. Fifteen people only to see an Amitabh Bachchan Film and a film hyped to the high heavens! I couldn't believe what I was seeing more than not believing what I saw in the film, which was the story of a sixty five years old patriarch falling madly in love with a eighteen year old girl. No, the great Indian audience was not going to take it. It was deadly against their sanskrity, parampara and sabyaata. They were not going to take it even if it had the god of acting, Amitabh Bachchan and a beautiful and talented young girl scantily, skimpily and seductively dressed up in it.

A few days later I happened to see the first show of Deepa Mehta's Water at a multiplex in Juhu. The first day first show had an editor of a trade paper, a leading producer, six young couples and me in the hall. The couple had come to see, sorry not to see but to use the hall as a rendezvous for their affairs of the heart. They were not interested in the widows in white with their heads shaven off. They were most interested in their own world than something that happened in 1938 or were not bothered if things like that still happened. I wondered how the multiplex would run the rest of the shows. Soon I found out that other films like Sarhad Paar and 1971 were being mauled in the same merciless way by the lovers of cinema. It was really a very very scary scene. I wonder how the men and women behind these films would take this punishment at the hands of the people who were their mai baap. It is a red signal for all filmmakers. They will have to find some new ways of bringing back the audience which is showing so much disdain for all their efforts which are not bearing any fruits. They will have to fill up these theatres before they turn into little hells and holes from where they will find it difficult to save themselves. The sooner the better for them and for the Hindi cinema.