1964 Ooty, Tamil Nadu, India
Geetha Emu
1950
Ooty, Tamil Nadu
Interviewed on February 7, 2025
by Khelan Parikh
K: What is the first movie you remember seeing?
G: I saw quite a few movies in my younger days both in Tamil and English, but the one that I remember still is ‘My Fair Lady’. I was about thirteen years old.
K: What do you remember about the movie?
G: Almost everything. It was a musical with songs that linger in your mind forever like the song “I Could Have Danced All Night” or “Get Me to Church on Time”. I remember the beautiful Audrey Hepburn turn from a poor flower seller with a cockney accent into a beautiful lady who was mistaken for a duchess.
When we were so young we just laughed at how funny the cockney accent sounded and how hard it was for her to pronounce common English words correctly or as a ‘lady’ should. Now it seems ironic that I who knew no English when I entered a school that taught and spoke only English went through the same ordeal except my teachers were nothing like Professor Higgins who filled Eliza’s mouth with marbles so that she can enunciate the vowels correctly. My teachers sat me down and patiently taught me to get the ‘sh’ sound correctly because my ‘ship’ sounded like sip and my ‘fish’ came out as ‘fis’.
It is considered one of the best movies of all time but as kids we didn’t think of all that, we just gazed at the screen and admired the actors and actresses and laughed at the jokes and enjoyed the music. Talking about jokes, I still remember the scene when professor Higgins takes Eliza to the races to pass her off as a refined lady with impeccable pronunciation and it was going very well till suddenly she got really excited and started cheering for a horse named Dover she says, “Come on Dover! Come on Dover! Come on Dover– move your bloomin Arse!”. Out jumps her cockney accent that Professor Higgins was so desperately trying to hide.
K: What did you think of the character(s), actor(s), story?
Professor Higgins was an expert in phonetics and was very interested in the different dialects spoken in England. When he saw this poor young woman Eliza Doolittle selling flowers in front of an opera house with a thick cockney accent, he arrogantly turns to another professor, Pickering, who was a language expert, and tells him that given time he can change Eliza’s accent and turn her into a lady and pass her off as a duchess. The rest of the movie is how he goes about training Eliza and the cruel methods he uses. In the end she does pass off as a lady of noble birth and when Higgens takes all the credit and gives none to Eliza’s hard work she leaves him. Only after she left him does he realize how much her presence meant to him. To make the story short, she eventually returns.
The acting was superb. Even the drunken old Mr. Doolittle, Eliza’s father, captures your heart. Audrey Hepburn was outstanding and so was Rex Harrison. The simplicity of the story, the beautiful settings and costumes and the wonderful music made it so memorable.
K: Do you remember the name of the theater? Were there ushers?
G: The name of the theater was ‘Assembly Halls’ in Ootacamund [Ooty] in the state of Tamil Nadu in India. There were no ushers. Our teachers ushered us in. This was the only theater that screened English movies. Around the same time we saw movies like Sound of Music, Ben Hur, and Cleopatra, in these halls.
K: How did you get to the theater? Why did you watch English movies?
G: I went to a boarding school called Lawrence School in Lovedale that was about 3 miles from Ooty where the theater was. There were times when we were bussed for movies but there were other times when we were allowed to walk to Ooty, sometimes for a movie or just for a day out. We always walked in pairs or small groups and whenever we got a chance we’d try to get a lift from cars passing by. In those days not very many people owned cars so the traffic was minimal. Every time we heard a car we’d get excited and lift our arms with our thumbs stretched out as far as it could go. Sometimes we got lucky because the car would stop and give us a ride to Ooty. Now it seems strange and downright scary to think we just got into cars with strangers but we never gave it a second thought in those times. We never heard of kidnapping or abusing kids and there never was a single incident as far as I can remember.
K: Can you speak more about how you got food at the theater and how you paid for it?
G: Here is how it worked. In a boarding school everyone was treated equal. Nobody can bring any cash from home. We all received one Rupee (Rs.1) every Saturday to spend at the School Tuck shop where they sold snacks. We were never given real cash but plastic coins like poker chips. I think the red ones were Rs 0.5, yellows were Rs 0.25 and whites Rs .01. When we went to Ooty on our day trips they would give us a minimum amount of real cash (maybe Rs. 2), but if we saved our Tuck money so we could exchange them for real cash on these outings. Sometimes we even had enough money to go to a restaurant and have a cheap meal like a dosa, but most of the time there was just enough money to buy snacks at candy stores and bakeries. Our favorite bakery was called “King Star”, where we would go after the movie. They had all sorts of goodies: chocolate fudge, sweet coconut balls, eclairs, various cakes and also various puff pastries filled with spicy meat and vegetables (meat puffs and veggie puffs).
K: Can you speak about what the theater was like? What did it look like inside? What patrons frequented the place?
G: I personally cannot remember too much of how it looked. It was an impressive building and it was very ornate with high ceilings and plush seats. I think it had a red velvet curtain in front of the screen that would part before the movie began. Since this theater only screened English movies, the patrons were upper class, both male and female. The crowd in Ooty was seasonal. Since it was on a hill, it got cold during the winter and was thronged by tourists in summer, so the theater would be full in the summer months. The other large crowd that frequented Assembly halls were the students from all the neighboring boarding schools like us.
K: I would also love to hear about other movies you remembered watching at Lawrence.
Every other Saturdays or once a month the school would screen movies and many of them were Westerns. We enjoyed these movies and loved reenacting them afterwards. We would team up as “Cowboys and Red Indians” and play the part. Since all we had was our uniforms the Red Indians will stick feathers (some times sticks and leaves) in their hair or paint their faces (usually with mud) while playing.
Geetha Emu (I call her Gammy) is my maternal grandmother.
