At the century old The Palace,
cinema and theater have co-existed harmoniously
Navroze D. Dhondy
Scoring a century has become passe these days. So for a cinema hall to stay the course, duck those fiery bouncers, deftly handle the deceptive googlies and reach that magical three-figure milestone with an elegant, master class of all round performance is the stuff only legends are made of.
In the year 1925, six years before Alam Ara, the first Indian movie with sound was released, starring the young Prithviraj Kapoor, The Palace, a city icon, was born. The broad, tree-lined, central avenue of Civil Lines, the grand Canning Road of Allahabad, saw a rather imposing building come up. The pristine......