During my internship here in Bombay some friends and I and used to live in a flat on N.M. Joshi Marg near Elphinstone Station. The flat was just near a corner of Bombay where many sweet memories were made. Deepak Talkies, now Carnival Cinemas but also known as Matterden in both its avatars was where I first saw Frida at their off-beat Sunday afternoon slot. Matterden was also where my girlfriend and I watched our first film together which was The Beatles’ A Hard Day’s Night after which we visited Cafe Free India just opposite Matterden for the first time. The food there is always fantastic by the way. Highly recommended. Pick up anything from the menu.

That small slice of Bombay is where beauty and a strange subtlety always lies. Take Matterden. It is a theatre home to an ideology. Each Sunday it screens an art film at very cheap rates. Most shows for these movies are with just a few people in there. Catch one of these on a Sunday afternoon and head afterwards for a sunset at Worli sea-face for contemplation and there, you have a perfect little weekend. These are the places due to which I used to call Bombay magical. This magic was also in the way it made different people interact with each other bringing the most urgent acquaintances into existence and helping them become something more. These cryptic occurrences I cannot decipher or help with any kind of explanation. It has only to be experienced.

Anyway, all this was brought back because we went for a movie last night at Matterden after having our dinner at Cafe Free India. I can best describe the film as the second-decade-of-the-21st-Century feminism gone mainstream in pop Bollywood. It was not well made. But that corner of Bombay was. The movie no longer mattered. Only the medium did.

See you tomorrow,
Avi.