Drive-In

It was just about a month since I had moved to Ahmedabad.  One weekend my roommates decided to go for a movie.  I was expecting to watch a movie in a normal theatre.  But when we were about to leave in the evening, they told me ‘We are going to the Drive-In theatre’.  That was the first time I heard about a drive-in theatre.  I asked them what a drive-in theatre is.  They said, ‘wait, you will see when we reach there!’

In a short while we reached the place.  When we entered the premises, I was really surprised and excited too.  It was an open-air theatre located in a huge ground with a big screen on one side and space for parking of hundreds of cars on the other side.  In front of the space for cars, there were a few rows of concrete seats, for people to sit and watch the movie.  Since we had reached the place before sunset, I had enough time to move around and see the entire place.  There was a food court in the centre and a beautiful garden in front of the wide screen.  Opposite the screen, behind the car park, was a building that housed the projector room, from where the movie was projected to the screen.  Many small speakers were placed at an equal distance through which people could hear the sound.  So, people could drive in their cars, park them facing the screen and watch the movie sitting in the car.  They could hear the dialogues through the speakers placed between each car.  There was no centralized sound system.  This, I hope, was to avoid disturbance to the nearby buildings.

The movie started when it was dark.  Since we did not go in a car, we sat on the concrete seats.  Some people were sitting on the lawns of the garden.  There were two shows daily, one around 7 pm and the other around 10 pm.  I don’t remember which movie we watched on that day.  But watching a movie in a drive-in theatre was a great experience.  The characters appeared on the huge screen and their dialogues were heard through the speakers near our seats.  During the interval, people thronged the food court for a variety of snacks, tea, coffee, ice-cream etc. It was a totally different experience for me.

The drive-in theatre was about 2 kilometers from Vastrapur, where I was staying.  On many weekends, we went to drive-in.  Whenever I think of drive-in, the movie that comes to my mind is ‘Dil to Pagal Hai’.  We watched the Shah Rukh Khan starred blockbuster three times in drive-in.  The movie had many hit songs of those days, and it was really nice to watch them on the big screen.  The drive-in theatre of Ahmedabad claims to be the widest screen in Asia.  If you are in Ahmedabad, pull out some time to watch a movie at the drive-in.  I am sure you would love the experience.   At a time when movie viewing is redifined by Netflix and Amazon Prime, nothing can replace the feel of a drive-in theatre.  I am told there is a drive-in theatre in Bangalore too, but I haven’t visited.