1953/1954 Jhang, Pakistan

Khalid Aslam
Born in 1945
First movie memories from Jhang, Pakistan
Interviewed on September 16, 2019 (Translated from Urdu)
by Gulminay Lone

The first movie that I remember seeing was a Bollywood movie called “Deedar”. It was either in 1953 or 1954, so I was 7 or 8. Before that I had always heard from the adults in my family about when they went to the theatre. They would come back and tell us about their experiences and the movies, and so when it was my turn to go, I was very excited. I had been anticipating it for some time.

We went to a theatre that was located in the main bazaar in Jhang. I have not been back to Jhang in more than 50 years and so I don’t remember it much now. I do remember that I went with my mother and my older brother. We took a car to the theatre. The theatre that we went to was massive; most theatres at that time were. It was grand and as a 7 or 8-year-old seemed even bigger than it was. Nowadays theatres are not of the same scale, and so they do not hold the same allure. Then, it was an event going to the movies, now it seems to be a mundane activity. We used to call the theatre a ‘cinema house’.

The theatre was packed with people, not a single empty seat. This was not uncommon. Every time a new Bollywood movie was released, it seemed that the whole town had flocked to the theatre. They were very popular, and this added to my desire to go and see a movie in the theatre.

Back then there was always an interval in the middle of every movie. The cinema houses always had canteens in them. They used to serve all kinds of local snacks from samosas to pakoras. You could either go before or in the interval and order what you wanted, or you could order and give them your seat number and then they would bring the food to you. We ate during the interval. Like all the adults, my mother had chai, but I was too young for that, so I ate samosas.

Deedar was a love story and a musical, the same as most other Bollywood movies. It was also a great tragedy. Love tragedies were the trend at that time. The story was about a boy and a girl who lived in the same neighbourhood growing up and became friends. They then started liking one another. As they grew up, they lost touch. The girl went on to marry a doctor and forget about the boy. The boy ended up losing his eye-site because of some sort of accident, but he remembered the girl. He goes to a doctor to have his eyes surgically fixed and succeeds. The eye doctor turns out to be the husband of his childhood friend and love and this is how they meet once again as adults. The girl does not recognize him, but he can identify her. The movie ends with him ruining his eyes once more because he cannot take the pain of not being remembered by her.

I am actually surprised that I remember this much because I have not seen the movie since then, but I have listened to its soundtrack afterwards. It was played frequently on the radio during the 1950s and 1960s. That is why I can still remember the plot and characters of the movie; I could reconnect the songs with the movie. I remember that my mother cried and that I was sad. But I was also very young and so I did not feel the intensity of the emotion the way all the adults did. Still, for a long time after that I never went to watch a tragic movie again; I did not want to see another sad story. I returned to the movie theatre, but to watch those with happy endings.

I remember so much of what actually happened in the movie, but much less of the other details. I think that I was so enthralled and focused on the movie that everything else surrounding it has slowly faded away. After that first time I wanted to back again and again because it was such a fascinating experience.