Once upon a play house

Pila Haus was an entertainment hub of the city that staged Parsi plays and Marathi tamashas. Today, its residents miss the area's lost glory. Kareena N Gianani takes a walk down the lane

The audience inside Theatre Royal at Pila Haus erupts in a roar when the film discontinues for a few seconds. The watchman at the gate looks over his shoulder and shakes his head, as if this happens often. “Technical problem,” he mumbles.

Unperturbed, he continues doing what he does best — yelling out ticket prices (Rs 13 and Rs15) to lure passers-by for the next show of the 1999 Sanjay Kapoor starer, Sirf Tum.

Old timers who have seen this dingy lane at Grant Road transform over the decades would perhaps love to reminisce about the era when Pila Haus theatres ran house-full. In a lane of zari workers, some brothels, dental, skin and sex clinics, theatres like Royal, Alfred, Gulshan and New Roshan now screen movies of the late 1990s.

Soli Arya, who runs Theatre Royal in partnership with his brother Russi Arya, tells anyone who would listen, how the once-remarkable-now-infamous Pila Haus got its name. “In 1830, the British closed all kabrastans in this area and built gaming clubs called ‘Play Houses’ here. Locals who couldn’t pronounce the term called one a ‘Pila Haus’,” says Arya.

He visibly regrets the notorious character the neighbourhood has assumed since decades. As he speaks of how the area was once frequented by the nawabs and later elite South Bombayites for its Parsi plays and movies, Arya sounds a tad eager to exalt Pila Haus’s erstwhile grandeur.

Tell him about the theatres still screening old, action movies and he says, “That wasn’t always the story. My father owned New Roshan Theatre too, and when Jungle Book released in 1967, people flocked to our theatres to see the gigantic cut-outs. The premieres held at the Pila Haus theatres were as grand as they could get, you know…” he trails off.

Little wonder that as Arya grew up and Pila Haus became synonymous with prostitution, he had to dodge questions from his friends asking him why his father worked in “that area”.

Further down the lane, one among the few Chinese dentists left in the area is Dr Hsiao Ting. His spacious clinic was rented cheap by his father, also a dentist, more than 60 years ago. “Pila Haus was swarmed with Chinese dentists.

Over the years, they migrated to the US and Canada for a better life. Things around here have changed, too, haven’t they? Pila Haus was an entertainment hub for the middle-class and the upper middle-class. Now, it is all out there for you to see,” he says, turning to the street mostly filled with men ambling to a theatre nearby for the next show. “This was the reason why the Parsi population, too, left Pila Haus,” adds Dr Ting.

His Parsi friend, Keki Irani, drops by and says he loved the days when life amidst the Pila Haus theatres meant ‘khao, peeyo, maza karo’ for him as a carefree lad. “I was the blue-eyed boy of the area and all theatre owners would let me sneak in to watch the
plays and the Marathi tamashas for free,” he chuckles.

Tucked away in a corner is the humble office of the Hindi weekly, Bombay Press. Its editor, Sharafat Khan might not have been as lucky as Irani to have watched films and plays for free. Yet, he likes this neighbourhood where “mill workers had spats over getting their share on the footpath for an afternoon snooze after a bath in the local hamam.”

“Pila Haus was the ultimate destination for filmgoers way before Regal and Metro took over.” And why not, he asks, when the theatres struck deals with their audience – four annas for a forthcoming show and eight annas to catch the ongoing movie after the interval.

Khan would often stand and watch bullock carts covered with posters of the tamashas, that travelled to nearby areas of Khetwadi and Girgaum to advertise. Ask him what Pila Haus stands for today, far from his world of Marathi tamashas and morning matinee shows, and Khan smiles. “The restaurant Delhi Darbar, I guess. There isn’t much left to boast of, is there?”
g_kareena@dnaindia.net