Our most precious memories are often created during school time. It was the time when we sought joy and lived life with no regret. Today I will share my own story of catching a movie by bunking school. 

I was sixteen years old; imaginations run wild at such a young age. My new friends were way smarter than me. They were film Pandits. They nurtured me with knowledge of movies. 

It was the onset of a monsoon. Our class teacher was absent for that day. So my friends readily decided to catch a movie. I was excited. We, five friends, scaled the wall of the school campus. Our bicycles were also lifted out. Our peers watched our adventure through windows. 

Our destination was around four kilometres from our school. I never visited that place. We started cycling through a narrow lane. Some onlookers noticed us. The show was supposed to start at 2 p.m. We reached it early. We stand in line for tickets. In 2003, the price of a ticket was just Rs 10 for the rear seat and Rs. 12 for the balcony. My friends probably sponsored my ticket.

It was a Bengali movie. The movie had a prominent super star in Bengal, “Prasenjit Chatterjee,” who is the son of yesteryear actor “Biswajit Chatterjee." A newcomer was cast in female lead. My adolescent friends could not stop praising the glamorous female lead. Paper posters depicting lead actors were pasted on the theatre walls.

We kept our cycle in the garage inside the hall enclosure. There were many fast food stalls inside the hall campus. We climbed to the balcony through the stairs. There were wooden seats arranged in rows. We sat in the back row. The ceiling of the hall is adorned with lights, creating the right atmosphere. 

The movie started. The neon light falls on the big screen. The movie was an action-packed family drama. A young, honest man who protests against injustice. The daughter of the bad man readily falls in love with the hero. In the first half, there were a few dances and songs. I have no qualms about accepting that I was mesmerised by the female lead. The movie goes on a familiar track. 

In the interval, we climbed down. Relived ourselves in the restroom. We got our hands on some pokora, in Bengali called “chop”. 

With pokara in mouth, we hooked on the screen for the final showdown between the hero and the bad man. The movie had everything for a masala entertainer, starting with action scenes at regular intervals, item song, and emotional scenes. Finally, the movie ended happily with bad man in police custody and  heroine in the hero's arms. 

When we got out of the theatre, it was raining heavily. In the garrage, I had to play hide and seek with an uncle of my neighbourhood. I do not want my parents to know about this movie outing. So I had to wait patiently until the uncle went off from there. 

It was 5.30 pm by then, and I was well past the school time. I cycled through the rain. To my good fortune, mom was not at home. 

The movie played out in my mind for the entire night. I became a regular moviegoer for the next couple of years. In those days, I had neither access to a smart phone nor a colour television with countless channels. So movies became my favourite pastime.

As time changed, single-screen theatres struggled for survival. Both the halls of my neighbourhood made way for flats and shopping malls. Although those theatres are demolished, the beautiful memories are still fresh in my mind.