THE FORGOTTEN BIOSCOPEWALA

                                            

THE FORGOTTEN BIOSCOPEWALA 

 ( Photo  by Avtar Mota inside Sadda Pind Amritsar)

The bioscope was a significant form of travelling entertainment in rural India. It was a source of wonder and news for communities living in far-flung areas before the arrival of television and the internet. It holds a unique and now vanishing place in the cultural landscape of the country.

The Bioscopewala or the operator would travel from village to village with a portable wooden box, having magnifying lenses in multiple viewing holes to show a sequence of static images or short, looping silent film clips. The arrival of this showman was a highly anticipated event, a break from daily life and work.

For rural populations, the bioscope offered glimpses of distant cities, historical events, religious stories, and even snippets of early cinema. It acted as a powerful medium for connecting remote communities with the broader national and global landscape. The operator's narration added a personal, interactive layer to the viewing, blending visual storytelling with oral tradition.

It was brought to  India by British colonisers in the early 19th-century and was re-invented numerous times before it integrated completely into the Indian landscape. Presently, the bioscope is remembered as a vintage slice of rural India's heritage. 

                                             

                                           

I vividly remember Mumtaz dancing around a Bioscope in the song," Paisa phenko tamasha dekho" in the 1971 movie Dushman. Again, the Indian film with a song featuring a bioscope was the 2018 Hindi-language drama film titled Bioscopewala. Based on Rabindranath Tagore's classic short story Kabuliwala, but this film's story changes the protagonist's profession from a dry fruit seller to a Bioscopewala who travels around showing films to children through his bioscope. The Bioscope remained a great form of entertainment in rural Punjab of yesteryear. Popular folk songs sung by Surrinder Kaur and Assa Singh Mastana were also played by the operator of the Bioscope while people watched still pictures through the lens-fitted windows. Not only children but village elders too watched it.

                                 

                                                    

                                                

                                          

    The  Bioscopewala would be paid in cash and kind by villagers.

( Avtar Mota)

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