‘I am lucky to be talking to you today’

 

MUMBAI: For Kiran Shantaram, former sheriff and owner of Plaza cinema at Dadar, the 1993 bomb blasts bring myriad memories of the human tragedy that lingers for the sheer trauma it inflicted. The most enduring and evocative is how a portrait of his late father ‘Anna’ Shantaram Bapu remained unscathed on the wall despite the devastating blast which shook the magnificent edifice to its roots.

 

Thirteen years down the line, Shantaram recalled the efforts he took to restore the landmark theatre his pioneering father had built by the sweat of his brow.

 

“Strict punishment must be awarded to the perpetrators,” he says. “Time, they say, is the best healer. The grievous wounds have healed, but now that the court is pronouncing its verdict in the case, people will have to perforce relive this unsavoury slice of nightmare,” says Shantaram, his eyes moist with the memories of the staff that worked with him loyally for years.

 

“On that day it was business as usual and the 3:00 pm show had begun. The Nana Patekar and Raj Kumar starrer Tiranga was being screened and was drawing good crowds. At 3:13pm, there was a huge blast that turned my office into debris,” he recalls. “Kismet was in my favour that day. I was to come to Plaza to meet some friends around that time. I was surprised when my friends called me up to say they had cancelled their visit following a series of explosions in the city. Soon after, one of my staffers came rushing to me at Rajkamal Studios. He was sweating. Panic was writ large over his face as he kept shouting that there was a blast at the Plaza too.”

 

Shantaram says his sense of relief at his own safety was overshadowed when he found that some of his staffers had fallen victims to the blast. “It’s a lucky stroke of destiny that I am talking to you now.  But our love’s labour was lost with the office, where once my dad sat, razed to the ground. It took me four years to make the theatre operational again.”