This writer grew up in an age before malls. One of our most delightful days was when the family would dress up for a matinee show on Sunday at the single screen cinema in the neighbourhood. For cinematographer and photographer Hemant Chaturvedi, finding rare single screen halls in a country dotted by multiplexes has been the mission for the last five years. His latest exhibition, Now Showing, at the Kala Ghoda Café captures 32 photographs of the ancient, broken beauty of these storehouses of nostalgia.

“I have travelled across the breadth of the country over the last five years,” the 55-year-old Chaturvedi tells us. It started with the accident of losing money at the Kumbh Mela when a tent cinema operator fooled him during a trip. Following the event, he happened to pass by a run-down cinema from his childhood in his hometown of Prayagraj (then Allahabad) that caught his eye. “It was stripped of everything that a cinema would have, but the interiors and exteriors of the building were so beautiful. It inspired me to shoot three more cinemas in the city,” he tells us.