Porn Free

Sleaze and how! Good old porn is alive and kicking on the city’s silver screens. And the bad (or good news, depending on your moral take on watching pornography), is that neither the law nor the theatre managers will stop you, even if you happen to be a school kid.

This won’t amuse parents on either side of the moral debate.

While the Indian Cinematograph Act 1952 has expressly stated that you have to complete 18 years to watch an adult movie, the porn lure to make some easy money is just too hard to resist for theatre owners, with some lacking even a licence to exhibit movies.

A Bangalore Mirror sting, in which two of our young trainee reporters ventured into these theatres dressed in school uniforms, revealed that not only was hardcore pornography easy to view, but even the uniforms hardly raised the curiosity of the security staff or the ushers.

Here is what happened:

At Rajeshwari Theatre on HAL Airport Road:

 This is one of the oldest theatres screening porn in the city. It also holds the dubious record of being raided the highest number of times. The business at the theatre, as we saw it, went on as usual. At 10 am when we reached the theatre, other than for a few customers giving us weird looks, we had no problem getting tickets.

We paid Rs 35 each for a ticket and asked the gatekeeper if there would be trouble from the cops. “Relax. We have been raided 20 times and we still continue to show movies. We pay the police the necessary mamool. So there’s nothing to worry,” he said.

With that comforting thought, we headed into the hall. It soon started filling up with people mostly in the mid-40 to 50 age group.

The movie began in Malayalam, and after 30 minutes shifted to semi-porn in another Indian language, continued into a hardcore extrapolation, and finished as it began - as a Malayalam movie.

After the show, most of the audience walked out with their helmets on and we saw some students in school uniforms waiting for the next show.

Jayalakshmi in R T Nagar:

Our next porn stop was the smaller Jayalakshmi theatre in R T Nagar. While the hoarding in front proclaimed the Kannada
film ‘Takat’ starring Vijay, at the counter we came across the smaller poster for a semi-porn movie.

A question on which movie was playing received a rude answer from the guy at the counter. “Just pay Rs 25 and go and watch the movie,” he said. To a further query if someone would come mistaking the movie, he was positively violent. “This is not PVR. Just shut up and go inside,” he shouted, handing us a token instead of a ticket.

The hall had about 15 people, mostly youngsters below 15 years. The movie began in Tamil, turned into a soft-porn 30 minutes later, and ended as a Tamil movie.

The whole experience was incident free.

At Abhiman off Mysore Road:

The poster of a English movie ‘Mirror Reflect’ with an enticing ‘A’ certificate stood in front of Abhiman theatre. Unlike other theatres, here we were asked if we are school students. Though we said ‘yes’, we were still allowed in. For a change, the movie was pretty straight forward with hardly any sex or interpolation. Later, a theatre staffer curtly said that the theatre did not show porn. “We neither show hardcore stuff nor do we allow school students inside. We don’t know how you were allowed inside, don’t come here next time,” he said.

That of course may sound like relief for parents. But don’t be fooled, there are over a dozen theatres in the city screening sleazy movies. And your child isn’t safe.

(Manjunath L & Manjunath C)