Last week, as I tried to glimpse the ghost of an old English film outside the illustrious, now-vanished Sangeet Theatre, I found myself staring into the reflective green glass of a new building. The old marquee, once a promise of 70mm magic, has vanished entirely. In its place stands a multispecialty hospital, its CT scan centre, cardiac wing, and the bitter tang of hospital coffee openly declaring their presence.
This is not nostalgia speaking. It is a fact. In Hyderabad and Secunderabad today, more people line up for MRIs than matinee shows. Queues for blockbusters have been replaced by waiting rooms; the popcorn swapped for IV drips. Our city’s lifestyle has quietly shifted from storyboard to stethoscope.
Curtains down, curtains drawn
Single-screen theatres in Hyderabad are shuttering at an astonishing rate. The drama is palpable: cinemas replaced by hospitals, malls, banquet halls, petrol bunks or, in a post-modern twist, gyms we rarely visit. Once, Hyderabadis paraded their cinema-going habits with pride; today, we flash our Aarogya Sri cards with the same flair.
In the heyday of Sangeet, Dreamland, and Liberty Theatre, we were not necessarily healthier, but the city’s hospitals such as Osmania, Gandhi, and Fever Hospital (Koranti Dawakhana) were sufficient. And the family doctor knew both you and your dog. Now, every sneeze prompts a consult; every cough, a clinic app or hop. For every minor ailment, there is a super-specialty centre just a swipe away.
Flatlining cinematic pulse
Each cinema in the old city was its time capsule. Some specialised in Hollywood (and ticket prices to match); others immersed us in Hindi or Telugu blockbusters, complete with samosas, confetti, and whistling crowds. Theatres like Royal Talkies (1927), Yakuth Mahal (1930), and Motimahal (scene of a 1936 tragedy) were more than venues – they were landmarks, both architectural and emotional. Krishna Talkies, Zamarrud, Select, Manohar, Paradise, Amar, each with its quirks, crowd, and charm, have either vanished or been unrecognisably repurposed.
Sangeet Theatre, opened in 1969, was Hyderabad’s English-movie citadel – the first with Ultra Stereo Optical Sound and DTS. It screened everything from Ben Hur, The Ten Commandments, Gone with the Wind and Guns of Navaron to The Schindler’s List. It shut down in 2008, with redevelopment plans for a multiplex or mall that stalled, leaving behind only blog posts and wistful memories.
Theatre of the Absurd
We used to go to Dreamland Cinema for escapism. Now, it is a wedding venue where our cinematic past lives on only in family functions. Cinemas are being reborn as banquet halls, hospitals, or shopping complexes, marriages between heritage and commerce, where the only spectacle is the reception dance or the queue to the ECG room. Is it the movies we miss or the city’s health?
The final showreel
The rise of OTT platforms has not helped. Streaming is now the go-to for films, fears, and finances. Theatre attendance, already in decline thanks to shifting tastes and the irresistible convenience of streaming, has dropped further. Multiplexes cling on, but single screens are all but extinct. Footfalls are down to 50-60% of pre-pandemic levels; revenues flatline, while streaming soars.
With each closure, Hyderabad seems to drift further from multiplex to multiple-organ disorder, from moviegoer to patient. So, did we lose our theatres because we fell out of love with cinema or because we became too busy, too distracted, or too unwell to care?
Cinemall adjustments
Even the multiplexes have altered the experience beyond recognition. Gone are the days when you could step out during the interval for fresh air and fresher samosas, grab chai with a biscuit, or crunch on palli-batana sold just outside the gate.
Today’s cineplexes seal you inside with surround sound and escalators, offering popcorn at platinum prices and soft drinks that cost more than some ticket tiers. The choice is not yours anymore; the food court is part of the business model. Watching a film has become less of a casual outing and more of a calculated transaction with a surcharge for sentiment.
Magnetic pull of cinema
Such was the magnetic pull of cinema that in Alwal and Bolarum alone, five theatres thrived within a snug three-kilometre radius. Weekends meant a brisk walk or a quick bicycle or scooter ride to catch the latest release at Nartaki, Laxmi Kalamandir, Select, Satya, or Sri Sai Talkies – each with its loyal crowd and preferred genre. Today, only Nartaki and Laxmi Kalamandir continue to flicker on, while the others have quietly slipped into the credits, their screens dark, their seats empty, their stories absorbed into the urban sprawl.
The city’s passion for film has not disappeared; it has simply migrated behind login screens, buffering bars, and subtitle tracks. The sweaty mad rush for tickets, the balcony camaraderie, the samosas, the whistles and applause, for now, they exist only on fading reels. Surrounded by prescriptions, sanitiser, and the glare of an OTT interface, the Hyderabad cinephile is now quarantined at home.
Perhaps, one day, someone will merge the hospital and the cinema into a single urban invention with a screen next to the cardiac ward and popcorn and pastries that are doctor-approved. Until then, as I pass yet another cinema-turned-clinic, I can only mutter the final line of a thousand films:
‘The End.’
(Inspired in part by a friend’s post recalling the charm of the old cinema halls in Twin Cities)
