None of us had ever seen a bioscope. There was a large hall in our village school which used to be closed for lectures sometimes. On certain occasions people from the city visited to give lectures on various issues in this room, which was totally dark without lights, barring the faint stream of light from the slides falling on a dark screen. But this was a grand new event— moving pictures on the screen with people fighting with each other, boats sailing on vast stretches of blue water in front of us- everything was beyond our imagination! We learnt that the bioscope evening was soon going to take place and we counted days for the arrival of that extraordinary day.

Our school was located very close to the main bazaar. Those of us who crossed the river by boats to attend school every morning, also traversed this bazaar every day. There was a big empty barn in the bazaar for accumulating wheat. We heard that the moving bioscope company was going to rent this barn for a week and have many shows for the entire village. As the day drew near, our excitement also magnified tremendously. Finally, the day was there— the show was going to begin just after dusk and a small crowd had collected outside the barn. After a while we heard a strange noise from the shed, similar to a rice-shafting motor. I was familiar to this noise and wondered what was happening inside! In a short time, the barn was lit up by thousands of electric lights. We thought that this was the same kind of gleaming electric light that we had seen many times in distant steamers after dusk, sailing from the west side of the village towards the east.

I had once sailed on a boat with my mother on our way to my uncle’s house but never really had a chance to board a steamer. Watching the electric lights dazzle so close to me that evening, had an incredible effect on me. The village in the twilight looked stunning, as if innumerable garland of lights were decorating a fantastic dreamland. Everyone around me looked in wonder at the vision. A new glittering world had suddenly opened itself in front of us!

As I recall, I missed the chance to watch the bioscope the very first evening when it debuted. I still can’t remember the exact reason why I missed it the first day. After the first couple of days, our school arranged for the entire class to watch the bioscope show right after school hours. There was a background made out of white curtains and seating arrangements were also made in front of that, under a tent. We sat on some benches at the back of the tent. In those days, bioscopes were still silent, and the characters of the show were all white people from the West. As the film continued, someone stood at the side of the white screen and made a running commentary about what was occurring in the story.

I still have some faint memories of a tremendous fight taking place on a large ship but hardly anything else from that entire show. Later in life, I saw so many bioscopes, cinema, theatres—but I could never forget the excitement and amazement of the first bioscope show I had seen that evening. For the next few days on our way to school, we only talked about the wonderful scenes we had seen. In the afternoon, I told my mother, aunt and sisters about the bioscope with exaggerated, fascinating details. My father and people like him from the upper classes in the society, perhaps, could never imagine sitting in a marketplace made up tent storage shack to see a bioscope show. Yet, this bioscope was important to me and my friends. For a long time, we wondered about the world and life beyond our tiny village, far away where people did not look like us.