I loved cinema. That, I believe was true about our whole generation which as children had looked upon the bioscope as ultimate entertainment. In the sixties, when first cinema was built in our locality, for my mates-even the most bookish in the class playing truant and skipping practical classes for watching a matinee show had become a pastime. Tickets for matinee shows cost less than the normal shows and mostly old films were screened in this shows. In 1983, when during my stay in the city of ‘films and film actors, in cinema-going I had a new experience – the drive-in theatre. My friends, who almost spent six months of the year in the city for trading handicrafts had never told me about this theatre.
The drive-in theatre was an open air cinema constructed on a vast piece of mangrove forest with Bandra on side and Kurla on the other side. The theatre accommodated eight hundred cars at time, and it came to life only after the sun sank into the sea- the shows started at nine in the evening. For young people, it was one of biggest rendezevous and on Saturdays a big attraction for a family outing. Whenever I had a guest or two, I made it a point to take them to the open air theatre for watching a film outside the stuffy cinema halls mostly filled with whistles, catcalls, boos, and jeers, in an altogether different ambiance of starlit skies. The drive-in theatre attracted crowds of cine-goers late in the night more for fun than the watching some blockbuster film.
One Sunday, I took a friend from Srinagar along for experiencing watching a film in open air, to make him remember the days when as small kids we assembled in a Park at Khanyar (now a martyrs graveyard) to watch films screened by the state information department. On that night, on the mega screen, it was one of the films produced or directed by the great short story writer and a novelist of fame – Ek Chadar Maili Se, Rajinder Singh Bedi. Perhaps, the name of film was ‘Nawab Sahib.’
From matinee show days, when I had watched ‘Garam Coat’ a film written, directed and produced by him in Shiraz cinema, I had loved his art of story telling and making films. Next day, I had a guest in my office, a poet, and an illustrious daughter of the state- Padma Sachdev. One thing great about the lady was she often remembered one of her benefactors Dr. Hafizullah, who had treated her as child in Srinagar for long time. For being well known in the literary circles of Bombay, she also knew Rajinder Singh Bedi. During long conversation, I casually mentioned to her about my visit to the drive-in theatre and watching a film by Bedi. Spontaneously, with a deep sigh, she asked me ‘to visit him immediately- he has cancer- he knows a lot about Kashmir.’ I had thought of calling on him to know about his role when most of progressive writers of India had camped in Kashmir.
The sad news about his grave illnesses prompted me. A couple of days after, I along with a friend of mine Dr. Mohammad Shafi Bhat, who was on his way for a job to Madinah visited him in his apartment. He was reclining against a cushion in a semi-lit room. The Filmfare awards, trophies, medals and testimonials on rosewood shelves were telling tales of success of a great Urdu writer of our times. Nevertheless, the deathly weariness was writ on his face. He had just returned from the Tata Memorial Hospital after a dose of radio-therapy. On knowing that we were from Kashmir, he instantaneously turned nostalgic and started recounting his days in Kashmir in 1947, when Jawaharlal Nehru had called him and detailed on a mission to Jammu for launching an ideological war against Pakistan. To record his memories, I instantly switched on my small tape recorder. He spoke disjointedly, yet, euphoric about the role he had played in setting up Radio Kashmir in Jammu and ‘making it a gunroom for combating the war of words started by Azad Kashmir Radio…