For the love of Satyam cinemas. For the love of Chennai.
Nearly everyone I know and grew up with in Chennai is possessive, protective, proud and occasionally, even petulant and precious about Satyam cinemas.
For too many people, it means too many things - all at once - and it is well nigh impossible to accurately dissect and verbalize what the entity stands for and has come to mean. What about the memories? Let’s not go there.
People go to the cinemas to watch a movie. In chennai, people watch movies because they get to go to Satyam. It’s as simple, silly or profound as that.
The movie - even the best of them - is only incidental. You go because you feel called and there isn’t a matching experience by a distance and no better return for the investment of your leisure time. Feel free to judge. It is an essential mooring of being a madrasi.
And we are not going so far as the popcorn, just yet. The tears will roll instead of the butter. Salty, all the same, I know.
For the longest time, along with the ecr and the beach, Satyam cinemas was Chennai’s counter to Bangalore’s weather and coolth. Until there was nothing left to counter bangalore for. But let’s not go there either.
Essentially, Satyam cinemas is not just a place where we go, watch tom cruise jump from the burj khalifa to the grand palaise with a stop over at the kremlin, exchange furious back stories and alternate endings, roll in our own shit and rinse and repeat.
The inconsequential act of movie watching has been wittingly converted into a feeling of being a part of something much larger. Larger than the movie. Larger than the audience. Larger than the organization that is running the show.
We feel intuitively understood, always attended to, carefully nudged and phenomenally well taken care of.
Of course, part of it is about ridiculously on point branding and ingenious marketing.
And yet over and beyond, it is the extra ordinary consistency, attentional to detail and an ability to put their money where their mouth is that has held them in tremendous stead over the years.
It would only be a mild exaggeration - or may be not - to posit that satyam unites people in madras like nothing else does. The entire spectrum comes home to satyam.
Whether it is a set of government school teachers out on their once a year viewing of an avatar like event film or the expats and embassy types catching up with their weekly dose of entertainment or a raucous bunch of college kids who have bunked college for a first day first show or the legion of hysterical city fans that all manners of tamil film superstars command or members of chennai’s large contingents of Anglo indian, Marwari, Gujarati, Sindhi and Bohra Muslim audiences - Satyam is our threshold of unity in diversity.
Not unlike the way cricket used to unite the country until we started winning way too many matches.
Some old timers may remember that the Satyam - before the ID, blur and bowling haze -was a run down complex not unlike the Devi cinemas of today.
The initial complex had three halls - Satyam, Santham and Subham. The turn around came in the early years of this century.
For a brief while, there used to be sree and it’s 30-seat box named Rendezvous, perfect for clandestine first dates, with a discrete, well appointed lobby and a food & beverage counter at the far end.
The news about PVR buying out Satyam has left the entire city crestfallen.
Hell hath no fury like a chennaiite being asked to step into a PVR.
I have nothing but scathing contempt, unyielding scorn and utter disdain for PVR.
They have stood for everything that is the polar opposite of Satyam. At a dna and genetic level, you cannot have two more differently visioned or aligned organizations.
If this was amalgamation of b2b organizations this would be a straight highway to hell. In this context though, the numbers may well keep rolling.
For over 10 years across multiple cities I, alongside the screaming and kicking millions have been forced to buy into the scam that is PVR. A scam that may, evidently, return good money but a scam, nevertheless, for what it’s worth.
From the uneven booking experience to antiseptic arenas that are designed like hospitals to the scarlet red carpets that are an eyesore to seats that feel like heavily used and crumpled velvet underwear to food and beverage options so industrial
Overpriced..? Hell, yes. If you watch as many movies as I do, the choice is between going to the theatre or sending your kids to college.
Genteel, dignified and knowledgeable Chennai folks - normally bound to limits of measured reason - are using phrases such as disturbing disgusting and crushing in the wake of this sale.
That is an indicator of the emotion at stake here.
Hidden somewhere is a case study waiting to be made, misunderstood and repeated as nauseam by organizations meaning to get a hand on the pulse of the audience.
More seriously, there are genuine lessons to be learnt purely from the point of view how every touch point in the business has been mapped.
A moment of truth in business is every such touch point that leads a customer to make an impression of the business.
Satyam, at one level, is a collection of moment of truth converted into moments of trust.
The truth is PVR is going to raze the Satyam experience to the ground.
Go well, old friend. So long and thank you for the memories.
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