Movies in Khani

There were no means of entertainment in Wadi in those days. Except for the few movies Mr. Menon arranged. But even before the advent of Mr. Menon, there were movie screenings in what we called Khani, near the Rawoor village adjoining Wadi. Wadi lay on a bed of excellent quality limestone. It was over 99% pure calcium carbonate. The whole belt was rich in this resource and that accounted for over 500 cement factories – big and small – for which limestone was the major raw material, in the area. The stone was also an excellent flooring material called Shahabad stone. These slabs of limestones were used by the local population for paving roads, building walls, laying roofs, flooring, making cement and for practically everything. Dig a few inches down the black cotton soil of Wadi and you reach rich limestone deposits. It was possible to mine it by hand. The ACC factory had a huge quarry for mining this raw material. There also were other landlords who had smaller quarries, called Khanis. (People speaking pure Hindi would call them Khaans). Some well known landowners with Khanis were Irani Seth in Rawoor and Devappa Maharaj in Wadi Bajaar. The Irani character was a mysterious personality. None of us had seen him. His residence was about five kilometers from the edge of ACC colony. My father apparently knew him. Incidentally, when my father was first transferred to Wadi in 1966, there was no ACC factory, no ACC colony, nothing. He stayed alone in the very same Irani Building which housed our school later as a tenant for a year or so. Since the Irani building belonged to Irani, father possibly knew Irani that way.

Iranis owned a lot of property in Wadi, Shahabad and Gulbarga. They were all related to each other. They were all also very enamoured of movies and the bollywood, so they owned and operated cinema halls called Tirandaz (Archer) in Shahabad and Gulbarga. Since operating a cinema Hall in Wadi wouldn’t be economically viable, The Irani there got prints of movies from Gulbarga and screened them in his Wadi Khani for his servants. It was all open and me and my father occasionally traveled to Khani in Rawoor for a movie. I recently learnt that this Irani’s son, who must be our age, ultimately made it to Bollywood and became a director called Kaizaad Gustaad, with whom current heartthrob Katrina Kaif started her career. So I have a tenuous Bollywood connection you see. Irani eventually opened a movie hall in Wadi which was called the Kismet. That was in April 1977.

Wadi Railway Gate which you had to cross to get to Khani, Photo Courtesy: Khurshed Irani