I remember being little.
I remember looking forward to Thursdays and Fridays because they meant something.
They meant going to the cinema.
For three hours, there was awe and wonder. A story unfolding. Characters showing us their good, their bad and their ugly.
I remember Urmila Matondkar in Rangeela, showing off her body with grace. And in the same film, Aamir Khan playing a tapori, asking a hotel waiter to turn the A/C towards him.
When I got older, I remember sitting in a cinema hall with my friends when the trailer of Dil Chahta Hai played during the interval of another film.
Our collective jaws dropped.
Months later, when we watched the film, the way we understood friendship, love and growing up shifted.
That is what going to the cinema does.
You don’t just remember the film. You remember who was beside you. What you whispered during the interval. The conversations you had on the way home.
Even when the film is terrible, we remember. We complain, dissect and laugh about how much money we wasted.
But we participate in the experience.
Something shifted after COVID.
We couldn’t go to cinemas, so we adapted. We started watching content instead of films at home.
Sometimes, we don’t even turn on the television anymore. We watch on our phones, while eating, scrolling and replying to messages.
But trust me, no great story ever started with:
“It was the most crucial scene, and didi rang the bell.”
There is, however, every chance of one starting with:
“Her hand hit mine, the popcorn tub toppled over, and we burst out laughing.”
A cinema is where you take your date and fear being caught. Where you take your grandparents because they want to watch a mythological film. Where you awkwardly look away from your parents—even when you’re well into your thirties—when an intimate scene suddenly appears on screen.
At the cinema, because the screen makes everything seem larger than life, our emotions become larger than life too.
We hold hands. We sniffle and cry. We laugh a little harder.
Sure, watching a film at home can be intimate. But I know I’ll probably pause. My phone will light up. Someone will call. Something else will demand my attention.
But when the lights go down in a cinema, you commit.
To the story.
To the experience.
To being completely present.
I want my friends to call me when a Christopher Nolan film releases and say, “We’re going, right?”
I want us to fight over which size of popcorn tub to buy. Find our seats. And walk out already discussing what worked and what didn’t.
Because the cinema was never just a place where we watched movies.
It was where memories were made around them.
And perhaps it’s time we came home to the movies.
At the cinema.
- Dhruvi Shah Mota