On January 1, 1990, all cinema halls were shut down,” recalls Vijay Dhar over a phone call from Srinagar. Dhar used to run Broadway Theatre in Sonawar, a 750-seater single screen, which was inaugurated in 1965.

The curtains fell after a militant outfit ordered closure of theatres and liquor shops in Kashmir; according to reports, grenades were also hurled at some. “There was a bomb blast in Broadway,” he remembers, “[thankfully] there was no casualty.” Dhar left the Valley during the exodus of Kashmiri Pandits, but returned two years later at his mother’s insistence.