A Film Buff in Madurai
We had reached the theater late that day. A temple procession on the main road made it impossible for our scooter to pass. Daring shortcuts brought us to the theatre a few minutes past the official show time. Fortunately, the show had not sold out. The usher turned on the flashlight and led us to our seats solicitously with his “paathu vaanga sir.” After all, Perippa, my uncle, was an old regular.
On screen, Mussolini invaded Libya. Omar Mukhtar, a bespectacled schoolteacher led the resolute local resistance which had few resources. Tanks rolled in the Sahara. The warm sands made me thirsty. Perippa bought me a bottle of soda with a marble stuck in its throat. I took nervous sips because I was convinced the marble would come unstuck and lodge itself in my throat.
After twenty long years of struggle – little less than an hour in movie time – the Libyan forces lost. The fascists executed the Lion of the Desert in the public square. A little boy bent down to pick up the dead hero’s glasses. I furtively wiped my eyes before the lights came on.
“That boy is their next leader. He grows up and leads his people to victory,” Perippa said in his usual boisterous manner as if he had watched the sequel. Strangely, I felt reassured. Years later, when I read the Boston Globe column that mourned the passing of Anthony Quinn, one thought flashed through my mind. “Omar Mukhtar is Dead.”
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Every summer we went to my father’s hometown, Madurai, to spend our vacations with our grandparents. Just as we thought we’d die of the heat and sheer boredom, Perippa, my father’s older brother, would make good on his promise and take us to the movies. Local films were not good enough for us, it was almost always a Hollywood film. Cowboy Westerns, thrillers, and the occasional martial arts films by way of Hong Kong — we saw them all.
Back then, films were not dubbed, nor did they have subtitles. What use were subtitles anyway? Many filmgoers could barely read Tamil. Perippa had taught himself American English from paperback novels and with help of a pocketbook edition of the Oxford English Dictionary. He read everything he could about the movies as well.
But for Perippa, my brother and I would not have watched anything except films shown on Doordarshan. My father seemed to dislike movies as much as his brother liked them though he did make a concession for Tamil film songs. He, however, would not be caught dead talking about anything related to films. “Even if he knows something about actors or films, he won’t let on” Perippa would say of his brother, with amusement. “It is below his dignity.”
When we went to the movies, Perippa had an entourage of five – three sons, my brother and me. As the youngest, my brother and I got on the scooter with Perippa. My cousins took the rickety silver-gray downtown bus. Our theatre excursions were spontaneous. Perippa did not believe in the concept of advance booking. If we got fewer than six tickets, the cousins would be sent home. We always got to stay.
Going to the theatre was quite an experience. How do you hold seats for your cousins, or for Perippa, if he had to step out for a minute? If you left your handkerchief on the seat, they’d know it was taken — you didn’t have to say a word. (Watching a rerun of the Seinfeld episode reminded me of this. Elaine Saves Seats At The Movies.) This was code which all moviegoers in Madurai understood. Even the ones who whistled at the family planning ads. Or those who read every word on the screen out loud for the benefit of their less-fortunate brethren. Before the movie started, the slides- ads for local businesses – came up one by one. After that came the newsreels. The opening credits would be greeted with applause and loud whistles.
Perippa would give us a quick rundown of the plot if the movie had been reviewed in The Hindu. Otherwise, he would keep up a steady narration — so we could follow what was happening on screen, after a fashion. Those in the nearby rows also turned to him for clarifications. Sitting right next to Perippa, I basked in the glory of this interpreter of foreign films.
The martial arts flicks were the easiest to follow, but here too we got off-screen outtakes. “See, it is like this. If you kids lift a calf every day, why, as it grows, so will your strength. One day you will effortlessly lift the cow off the ground”, Perippa had told us. “Devoted practice is key.” For the longest time – before a knowledge of physics spoiled it after all – I believed it was possible for me to carry a cow. I just had to be diligent about the whole thing.
As we got older, the boys went to the movies on their own. A couple of them went to study outside Madurai, so did my brother. But Perippa kept our summer tradition just for me. I realized, by then, that his telling deviated from the script. If the onscreen version was different, it didn’t matter – a parallel narrative made everything more interesting. Our trips to Madurai finally came to an end when my grandparents died.
Perippa himself passed away in his seventies – till the end, he went to family gatherings, enjoyed books and, of course, watched movies. Most would say he had a long life. But I would say he died too young because he had passed on just before the era of Netflix, Amazon, and other streaming video services. In his old age, I am sure he would have loved watching subtitled cinema from any continent – on demand – from the comfort of his home. And, it would have been our turn – my brother’s and mine – to tell him about new releases and discuss the finer points of films we liked with him.
Alas, it was not to be!