At the ticket counter, you can also recharge coupons for mobile phones

Entrance of Shri Ram Cinema, Joura

JOURA (MP): The seats are wooden. The floor isn’t concrete. But at Sri Ram Cinema, an audience of four is engrossed in Chhupa Rustam, the surprise Bollywood hit of 2001 with Sanjay Kapoor (remember, Anil Kapoor’s younger brother) in the title role.Suddenly, the action shifts away from the screen. The door opens, and a man carrying a sack of wheat walks down the aisle and unloads his burden between the front row and the screen. Nobody seems to mind. It’s just one more added to a pile of around 50 sacks.“Hardly anyone goes to the movies these days. The returns don’t even take care of the electricity bill. So I have offered this space to a friend to store wheat and bajra,” says Gouri Shankar Gour, who owns the cinema hall-cumgodown in Joura, a small town in north Madhya Pradesh . He stops to sell a ticket to a fifth customer on the other side of the counter who doesn’t seem to mind that the show has already started.Sri Ram Cinema has about 100 seats, screens two shows every day — noon and matinee — and charges a fixed rate of Rs 15 for any seat. The cash counter doubles as a mobile recharge point.The entrance has the look of a regular home. Only the words “pravesh” (entrance in Hindi) and “swagatam” (Sanskrit for welcome) painted on the wall suggest that it’s more than a house. Above hangs a framed photograph of Lord Ram with Hanuman at his feet. Adjacent to the entrance is a small grocery store that earns a little more money for the enterprising Gour.For over a decade, Gour proffers, he worked at another theatre for a relative. After the two parted, he started this own theatre in 2002. By then single-screen theatres had fallen on hard times due to the scourge of pirated VCDs. Gour hoped to swim against the tide but it has been tough. “I think of calling it curtains now and then. Several other cinema halls in our town, such as Rang Mahal and Arzoo, have shut down,” he says.There was a time, Gour recalls, when mythologicals and dacoit dramas ran to packed houses in Joura. Not surprising, since the small town is part of Morena district. Along with Bhind, Morena was once home to many outlaws who rode the ravines of Chambal. The bandits are now history. Every day Sri Ram Cinema wages a weary battle to survive.