In 2019, I found myself in Prayagraj and stumbled upon Lakshmi Talkies, an old art deco cinema hall from my childhood. In a conversation with a shop owner nearby, I discovered it was shut in the 1980s and was up for demolition—to be replaced by yet another shopping mall. This sparked off a desire to document the rapidly vanishing single-screen cinema heritage in India. In the last 35 years, India has gone from 24,000 cinemas to less than 5,000 today, of which barely 1,000 are still functioning. I have, ever since, driven over 50,000 kilometres in my jeep, visited over a thousand towns across 22 states and photographed around 1,200 single-screen cinemas. In the 1930s and 1940s, once art deco became the vogue in erstwhile Bombay, it was only natural for it to find its way to other parts of the country. In places like Kanpur, Jaipur, Patiala, Bhusawal, Sathankulam, Coimbatore and Bareilly, the art deco style was mixed with local architectural flourishes, creating a unique language of lines, patterns and forms. The sense of drama and awe that art deco inspired, in my opinion, lent itself beautifully to the collective cultural experience of watching a film on the big screen.
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