Team Indulge Express walks the narrow lanes of Mumbai, uncovering a cinematic history that doesn’t appear in textbooks. From century-old theatres to echoes of live plays, Pila House and its streets reveal the city’s forgotten cultural heartbeat, where cinema, theatre, and legends once thrived.
Once a lively stage for Parsi plays and Marathi tamashas, Mumbai’s Play House—better known as Pila House—grew into a theatre district after the British converted the area’s graveyards into playhouses. The neighbourhood came alive with halls like Alfred Talkies (once Rippon Theatre, 1880), New Roshan Talkies (earlier Elphinstone Theatre, 1930s), Gulshan Cinema, Royal Cinema (1911), Nishat Talkies (1952) and Super Cinema (1920s).
Each shifted from live performances and early silent films to talkies, and eventually C-grade, Bhojpuri and old Hindi cinema. Today, while many have shuttered, a handful still flicker on, serving migrant workers and adjacent Kamathipura, bearing witness to a century of Mumbai’s shifting cultural underbelly.
From Sea to Stage: A Vibrant Mumbai Neighbourhood
Less than three centuries ago, this patch of Mumbai lay beneath the sea. By the late nineteenth century, it had risen into one of the city’s most vibrant neighbourhoods—a hub where theatre, music, and cinema converged. Once compared to Times Square in New York, this quarter became a playground of stories, a stage that gave birth to legends of film and performing arts. Though its glory has faded, the streets still carry whispers of that spectacular past.
A Walk Through Memory and Culture
A short walk of barely a kilometre and an hour and a half in time reveals slices of history that shaped not just a city, but an entire culture. At every turn lies a memory: marquee lights of the “Broadway of Mumbai,” echoes of rival “underworlds,” and the strains of a Qawwali queen, Shakeela Bano Bhopali, whose voice once commanded audiences.
The anecdotes are as rich as they are unlikely—a moustache linked to Kaiser Wilhelm, the jeweller behind Mughal-E-Azam, a young M.F. Husain sketching stars outside Alfred, and a showman with his dwarf companion—all adding to Bombay’s eccentric charm.
Alfred Talkies: History, Cinema, and M.F. Husain
Presiding over it all is Pila House, which witnessed the rise of theatre and cinema. Alfred Talkies, built in 1880 as Rippon Theatre, embraced cinema in the 1930s, its pulley system for curtains still hanging like a relic. Young M.F. Husain lived on the pavement outside Alfred, painting film hoardings, absorbing the magic of moving pictures—a practice that shaped his monumental style.
Today, Alfred screens old Hindi blockbusters on vintage 35mm projectors. The walls plastered with film posters feel like time capsules from the ’70s and ’80s. On my last visit, Kala Patthar played, tickets ₹40, three shows daily.
Remnants of a Chinese Community and Gangubai’s Mumbai
Nearby stands the modest clinic of Dr. Hsiao Chinchai, a remnant of the once-thriving Chinese community. Migrants from Hupeh province brought dentistry to Bombay, dwindling after the 1962 Sino-Indian War. A nod appears in the Sanjay Leela Bhansali-directed Alia Bhatt starrer Gangubai Kathiawadi, where Gangu jokes to a dentist, “Abe pura China muh ke andar ghusayega kya?”
Royal, Nishat, and New Roshan Talkies: Stories Across the Lane
At Kamathipura crossing, Royal Talkies and Nishat Talkies face each other. Royal, opened in 1911, now awaits redevelopment, while Nishat, founded in 1952, continues under Neeta Nihalani. Nearby New Roshan Talkies, immortalised in Gangubai as the hall where Gangu and friends sneak in, is permanently closed—a reminder of cinematic history and real-life erasure.
Super Plaza Cinema: Vintage Charm in a Modern City
Near Pila House bus stop and Grant Road, Super Plaza Cinema, once fully air-conditioned, drew crowds in its prime. Today it screens regional movies for loyal audiences, its vintage architecture offering a no-frills cinematic experience that endures amid multiplexes.
A Cultural Legacy Under Threat
Mumbai—the “city of dreams,” home to India’s film industry for over a century, where Amitabh Bachchan, Shah Rukh Khan, Salman Khan, Raj Kapoor, Dilip Kumar and countless others are etched into memory—is losing the theatres that defined its cultural heartbeat. Developers’ hawk eyes are replacing domed façades and neon marquees with uniform towers and society flats. The city’s living mosaic of art, ambition, and imagination risks being flattened—a city that built cinema, now watching its stage curtains fall.
(Story by Arundhuti Banerjee)
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