APROPOS the feature ‘Karachi’s once bustling Prince cinema is no more’ (Sept 7).

The thought of Prince Cinema is a very deep set memory. I remember my mother being ecstatic because my father had gotten some movie tickets on his way home from work.

We were told we were going to watch a film. What film? That was inconsequential. I don’t even think the scrap piece of deep dyed pink ticket stubs at the time indicated the name of a movie. It was simply a cinema ticket.

A pink slip if you will with a peeling print of a crown logo on it.

There were so many people there. Customers, movie goers, shoppers from the neighbouring marketplace, hawkers, food vendors, all dissolving into each other. You could hear the iconic soundtrack of the Jurassic Park on the street outside as the doors were ajar where non-paying customers were huddling over each other to catch a glimpse of the big screen.

Our parents navigated themselves to our designated seats, although in hindsight they got a hold of any seat that the usher would direct them to without a glance at their ticket. He just needed to see it was pink. It was only after we sat down that I let the entirety of the situation seep in. A projection so large I had to turn my head to watch from left to right on the screen.

I also remember that the audience was in complete tandem with one another. The oohs and aahs (maybe even a dozen screams) synchronised organically. Everyone sat rooted to their seats. And it was only after the credits rolled and the lights came back on did I see that the rows in between the seating were totally filled with more people from outside.

I suppose the ushers felt generous with their autonomy after the interval to let as many people in as they could. I remember the seats being small, wooden, mismatched and how they clattered with the bass from the stereo, just added that much more to the entire experience.

S. A. Qureshi

Karachi

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APROPOS the article ‘Karachi’s once bustling Prince Cinema is no more’ (Sept 7). I highly appreciate the well-researched article, so much so that a person like me who keeps a keen eye on cinemas in the city cannot add anything that the writer has missed.

Prince Cinema was unique in the sense that it had the highest seating capacity of any theater in the city, surpassing even old historic Rio.

It had a very big screen and still I can visualise, as she has narrated, the opening scene from the film Our Man From Hong Kong’s Jimmy Wong Yu, the lead actor, gliding over the city of Hong Kong just before dawn, amazing to see the manual kite he was riding on, on the huge screen.

The film also had an Australian actor, George Lazenby, in a negative role who later on starred as James Bond in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service.

Apart from being very spacious, Prince like Palace was single floor with two big aisles and premiered epic Sofia Loren and Christopher Plummer starrer The Fall of the Roman Empire.

The writer’s sentence “people didn’t go to watch movies. They went to look at the cinema’s” appears to be written for people like myself, always on a lookout for the cinemas which were being renovated in the city like Lighthouse, Plaza on Bundar Road, Paradise on Abdullah Haroon Road and Nagina on the suburbs of the city to name a few. Alas, all of them have been demolished and are no more.

Iqbal Memon

Karachi

Published in Dawn, September 14th, 2019