Theatre boom in Attingal

Attingal, a poor cousin of the capital city of Kerala, Trivandrum, has suddenly found itself as host of a theatre boom. So far Attingal’s only claim to fame has been a long forgotten Attingal mutiny (back in 1721), which local historians claim to be the first rebellion against the British in Kerala. In the eighties and nineties Attingal was also known as the Mecca of parallel education because of the large number of parallel colleges through which an unbelievably large number of students obtained degrees from University of Kerala.

At the beginning there was Meenambika. I mean a theatre called Meenambika, in which Sathyan and Ms. Kumari entertained the first generation film-goers in Attingal with their merry acting in black and white. Later in the eighties Meenambika would receive a facelift and would be renamed as SR. Two more theatres came in the seventies: Gowri and Hari in which Nazir, Jayan, Sheela, Jayabharathi and the likes splendidly displayed their emotions in Eastman colour much to the delight of the wide-eyed people of pre-television era. Only three theatres in Attingal survived the eighties: Gowri, SR, and a newly launched theatre called RNP. By this time Malayalam cinema field had been curiously watching a two horse race among Malayalam heroes. Mammootty and Mohanlal became heartthrobs of thousands of people in and around Attingal through their exploits on the screens of the above-mentioned theatres. But the crisis in Malayalam film industry during the late nineties badly hit these theatres. Unable to withstand the heat of mounting loss, the owners of SR and RNP fatally decided, like several other owners of B class theatres, to turn to Shakkila movies.

(Any of you who do not know Shakkila should consider yourself unlucky. She is one of the last queens among the endangered species called soft porn actresses. She is a massive collection of white flesh in the true tradition of Anuradha and Disco Shanthi. Nowadays it is hard to find actresses who do exclusively soft porn. Some do it as side business to modeling like Mallika Sherawat and Bipasha Basu, while some truly gifted ones manage to merge their soft porn acting with the acting in mainstream movies, for example Nayanthara.)


After some time Shakkila became too fat to fit into even a 70 mm screen and people who religiously watched her began to understand the virtues of dieting! Shakkila went out of favour with the audience, but the bad name her movies fetched to these theatres remained. Family audience revengefully ignored both these theatres. Slowly the functioning of these theatres reached a tragic climax.

All that seem to be matters of history now. SR has been revived and Baba Kalyani, a Mohanlal film, has been running there. The owners of Gowri theatre, who have a well-established theatre called Vasu in Varkkala, had already started a new theatre with a memorable name, Dreams, with really good facilities. (One can book movie tickets of this theatre online through the website www.ecityatl.com.) Add to that Thapasya and Paradise, a new generation theatre complex on the shore of Vamanapuram river, one might think this is more than enough for an emerging town. But encouraged both by the success of some recent movies and by the stringent measures from the part of the police to curb CD piracy, more people are coming into theatre business in Attingal. A theatre called Ganga (which is very near to Dreams theatre and to a well-known bar called Ganga) was inaugurated some days back by Varkkala Radhakrishnan MP.

A more spectacular inauguration is on cards for another theatre. Mr. Theepettiyil Rajan, a rich NRI who produced some films like Swapnkkoodu and Sathyam, has bought the old RNP theatre, renovated it, and given it a new name, Vysakh. It is going to be inaugurated on February 3. Mayavi, starring Mammootty, is scheduled to be the first film in Vysakh. The fact that Mr. Rajan himself is the producer of the movie gives credibility to this news. Also, both Mammootty and Mohanlal are rumoured to have agreed to participate in the inaugural ceremony.