ABSTRACT
On the far eastern edge of India, just 100 kilometres by road from Myanmar, is Imphal, the capital of Manipur; a former kingdom controversially merged into the Indian Union in 1949 and subject to various separatist and interethnic conflicts ever since. With a population of half a million, Imphal city sits in the Imphal valley, a depression within the Patkai range at an elevation of 770 meters surrounded by higher, steeper hills that form the majority of the land in the state. Among the semi-completed residential buildings, military check posts and headquarters, government buildings sitting behind security bunkers, and markets teeming with goods from across the border are the remains of Imphal’s cinema halls. On Bir Tikendrajit Road, one the Imphal’s busiest streets, sits Rupmahal – a theatre built in 1948 and the onetime heart of Imphal’s politically charged theatre scene (see Somorendra, 2000) and later a cinema. Like so many other patches of pavement along Bir Tikendrajit Road, including the nearby public library, the courtyard of Rupmahal hosts a second-hand clothes market. Vendors have strung bamboo poles hanging shirts and coats between concrete pillars, exterior walls, and on protruding steel rods. On plastic sheets arranged on the ground are piles of pants and T-shirts. The clothes have labels and logos in Chinese, Korean and Thai. Inside the dark lobby of the theatre is an old ticket window for Imphal Talkies, the cinema that ran from of Rupmahal for several decades (and now the name of one Manipur’s best-known rock bands). The cinema has not operated since the early 2000s when underground groups imposed a ban on Hindi language in Manipur, reducing the number of films available to show. This, combined with mounting insecurity for residents since the 1990s, killed off Imphal nightlife (Akoijam, 2010). The place appears deserted but behind the heavy door of the theatre is a troupe of actors rehearsing for an afternoon performance under a few light bulbs dangling from the roof. The cinema is gone, but in its place the theatre has been resurrected.
