What else do we have in Mumbai for the Tamilians?" It was requests like these that led Nambi Rajan to purchase Aurora Talkies in the 1980s. A single screen cinema, it shows in five languages: Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, Hindi and Marathi. It is a building deeply embedded in the history and imagination of its neighbourhood - Matunga.
Aurora, a smooth, circular building in the shape of a vessel docked at port, is nestled between a flyover and a busy street. It used to be the last stop on the tram, the 'lands end', but today, it falls along one of the city's busiest routes. If you live in Matunga, you or perhaps a member of your family once marked your days to its tower clock, which used toll at the hour, every hour, for over six decades.
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It is a classic example of a '30s Deco interior and a late- '40s Deco exterior, betraying a strong nautical theme. It also connected the landscape of the Deco cinemas together: "Prints would be taken to Metro at 8.30 am, 9 am to Eros, 9.30 to Regal - three shows for 12 Sundays, all house full," says Rajan of the network that involved a team of people scurrying the prints across the city in time for each show.
But the Aurora is not just a cinema. While walking around its disk-like curves, we spot men getting their ears cleaned, or couples holding hands, whispering in its nooks. It is a public space as much as it is a private cinema, and with a hybridity characteristic to this city - the surrounding neighbourhood uses its steps and landings as spaces to socialise.
Aurora is an ideal example of how conservation projects are not only for the privileged. The type of social activity that it breeds would not so easily translate onto the steps of a large multiplex or mall. In fact, this type of public sociality is integral to Matunga's history, being as it was a hotbed for Communist Party mobilisation in the 1930s. It housed the densely populated Matunga Labour Camp for the city's mill workers, and encouraged performance poets and dramatists, such as the infamous Annabhau Sathe, to congregate and conduct meetings and study groups. In fact, mill workers were Aurora's primary patrons for many years, hence its regional specificity.
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