Ritu Soni: I’m so filmy, it hurts !

My first memorable journey into cinema was watching the film Guide in Southall, London.

The packed cinema came alive as the film started. Big stars shone onto the screen and it had started. In each reel I lost myself.

A five-year-old in a foreign land with a very filmy family descended on the cinema to enjoy memories from home.

When the heroine danced her classical dance, my feet tapped alongside her.

I was too young to understand the story as its plot was quite out of reach for a small child but the songs were hauntingly beautiful.

From there, at the tender age of five, I had begun this journey into that beautiful world of Hindi films and memories of an India I didn’t know.

Locally, a cinema opened that saw the need to run a Sunday feast of 2 to 3 films back-to-back.

Samosas in our bags and tea in our flasks we descended on the venue and took our seats to be mesmerised by films like Aradhana and then to cry uncontrollably as the hero died.

Memories of this time flood my mind. And the journey into films continued at home through the vinyl record collections.

Those unknown films came alive through the covers of the records and the songs that played. We then had to wait for the video era to provide us with the next episode of movies memories

The first weekend we hired a video player and watched films back-to-back with crowds of family friends huddled around the ‘magic box’. Then we had our own video player and video hire became big business as did video piracy.

Soon we were watching films a lot more often and sometimes when the tapes would get stuck, we would untangle the tape and hope and pray it would still play .

From there to ultimate DVD collections and now constant streaming on Amazon Prime Video and Netflix to name a few !

Cinemas now show every release. Film festivals growing year on year satisfying our thirst for cinematic experiences. There is nothing we miss but I remember our journey into cinema and it still gives me a buzz and in all those years it hasn’t lessened at all.

I’m so filmy it hurts.