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

Prabhu

Deepa writes to say that she was born in the ACC Hospital. Was surprised to learn that. Well, I guess, while WE were the devout Muslims, SHE was the one born in Mecca. Datha also called yesterday to let me know that most of the Saint Ambrose and Mount Carmel fraternity were in or around Hyderabad or Cochin. Hope we get to meet one another. Back to Wadi now. I plan to go back a little in time in this post and talk again of the late 60s and early 70s. While we were at the Irani building premises of the school, in the second and third standards, we had a boy called Prabhu (pronounced Parbu – in true Wadi style) in our class. Prabhu was tall for his age and I guess quite a bit older than all of us in the class. Also unlike others, who came from ACC colony or Railway Colony, he came from Tanda. He belonged to the Lambadas. He, like most boys of his age liked to imitate the filmstars of those age and times. He wore tight pants and sunglasses. Being older he was a bully. He used to harass us kids. But it wasn’t the done thing to report these harassments to the teacher. We had to deal with it ourselves in a manly way. When I reported this problem at home, my mother wrote out a note to out a note to our class teacher saying “please ask Prabhu not to trouble Ramdas”. Since it would have meant that I was seeking outside help to deal with the problem and since I thought that the note should have read …..”please tell….rather than …….”please ask…..”, I did not actually deliver it to the teacher but threw the note into a marsh on the eastern side of Irani building. Prabhu was part hero part villain till we were in third standard. I remember praying that I be rid of him. One day when we went to school we heard that Prabhu had died! We went in a line from the school, accompanied by the teacher to his house in Tanda. He was lying on the floor in the school uniform, which consisted of green pants and lemon yellow shirt – which, considering their economic conditions was the only decent dress he had. His father was a drunkard and his mother sold milk for a living. He had on the sunglasses too and lying on the floor lifeless, he looked much smaller than us. Death has a way of shrinking people physically. We kids, seven and eight years old, didn’t really know what death meant, But we knew Parbu wouldn’t be coming to school any longer. We felt a curious admixture of grief and relief.

My son Kartik, who is now of the same age, was yesterday talking to me about a classmate of his. He said, “Vedant’s dad died a few years back in Malaysia in a road accident. He was driving a Scorpio. Vedant lost both a good car and a dad”. It seemed a curious viewpoint, equating a dad with a car. But possibly that’s how kids think. The place things more in perspective. Possibly that’s how we thought about Prabhu too.