L-R : Younger sister Guria, Yours truly and Meenakshi

1971: Those days TV had still not made inroads into people’s drawing rooms. For the middle class, there were hardly any avenues of  entertainment. Sometimes in the evenings, PRO office showed Hindi patriotic movies on a big projector to public- Jagriti , Boot Polish, Poorab Pashchim to name a few. The excitement would start building up before the sunset. People would leave office early, finish dinner quickly so that they could watch the movie on the sandy ground outside the PR office. But only the entertainment was provided, the public had to bring their own chairs or charpais to sit on. Being ‘madam’ children, the front area was reserved for us and our chairs were brought from the office by Mauji, the office boy.

Two years later when the TV was introduced, B & W TV sets were sent to the PRO office for testing before those could be sent to the villages to be purchased by panchayats at subsidized price. Though hardly interested in watching B &W TV with poor reception, TV was a bonanza for us sisters. Only our house in the entire city had a TV. Wednesday was the Chitrahaar day and Sunday the day of the Hindi feature film.

Paternal grandparents Dr Chaman Lal Gulati and Mrs Suhagwanti Gulati

Come Sunday 6 pm and the public would throng the PRO office to watch the movie. The set was kept in mother’s room. By privilege we sisters had the authority to give front seats to our friends or those who were extra nice to us. I can remember issuing tickets, assigning people the row and number of the chairs. Obviously no money was charged. It gave us a thrill to turn down people because of non-availability of chairs. On those rare Sundays when the number of film watchers were a few, mother would ask Mauji to make tea and pakodas for everyone to be served during the interval, all complementary.