Growing up with the movies – An Introduction

In this series called Growing up with the movies I will be revisiting movie from the 80’s I grew up with.

why am i doing this? i am doing to revisit those days….

those days when we are not cynical about the movies we saw

those days of playing ‘dishum dishum’ in the water of juhu beach

those days of  holding a vhs in your hand and thinking  all the stars are in there in that long black reel

those days when we used to watch movies umpteen number of times

those days when ganesh chatutrthi meant sitting on a gonpaat ( gunnysack) watching back to back movies being projected on a white cloth

those days of watching saapthaiki and making notes of the movies to watch

those days of chhayageet, chitrahaar and phool khile hain gulshan gulshan.

those days of collecting bunch of cards that had movie posters and stills on it and playing card games with it.

Those days that will not come back and the only way to bring back a tiny part  of those wonderful days is to write about…. those days

It feels as if my memories are stored safely in a locked box in my mind and the key to it is cinema.

Indian cinema is in its 100^th year and as I was thinking of writing something to celebrate it. I went through a series of sight and sound images in my head that involved my personal experience with cinema. Songs and visuals I have grown up with.

Fortunately, though I was born in the late 70’s I have been exposed to Hindi cinema of the 60’s and 70’s thanks to a family obsessed with movies. Right from my parents to my uncles and aunts different tastes of cinema has had a strong influence in shaping me as a movie buff.

Though I believe that I have a weak memory and my recall of my past is low but every time I hear a song or a visual of an old Hindi film I feel a rush of memory coming back to me.

This series called ‘Growing up with the movies’ is an attempt to revisit those movies and write about the experiences I have felt associated with those movies. In this series I will be covering mostly films of the 80’s starting with Ramsay’s Saboot because this film has the first visual image i remember of having seen the big screen for the first time in my life.

Watch out for the next post…