For decades, until just over a year ago, Ashok Nagar was home to a theatre so beloved that it even found its way into a song: Udhayam theatre la en idhayathai tholachen… In the 1980s, ’90s, and early 2000s, Udhayam theatre was a true FDFS spot, where heartbreaks, fight sequences, and larger-than-life heroes moved audiences. Before its patronage dwindled in its later years and the theatre eventually gave way to real estate development, it stood as a landmark, an institution that had watched a city grow around it.
Udhayam opened its curtains to film lovers in the summer of 1983, with the screening of Rajinikanth’s Sivappu Sooriyan. The theatre was started by six brothers from Tirunelveli, and housed three screens initially: Udhayam, Mini Udhayam, and Sooriyan. Chandran was added in later years. Even the bus stop in the area was known as the ‘Udhayam stop’.
“It was, perhaps, the first complex theatre (or multiplex) in the south of Chennai in those days. The theatre was very strategically placed and centrally situated, and it always had walk-in audiences. It had a decent car park for those days, so the theatre saw both high-end and mass crowds. Just about any film you played there would run successfully, because of which it earned the title of ‘collection king’,” remarked film analyst Sreedhar Pillai.
