No. Don’t spread your hands wide or break into a dimply come-into-my-arms smile. Instead, simply hold the fingers of your right hand like a gun and tap above your heart twice. This may not be as romantic as Shah Rukh Khan’s signature love gesture, but then it’s the official silent shorthand for King Khan as per the latest Indian Sign Language (ISL) dictionary launched by Prime Minister Narendra Modi earlier this month. Khan’s name is among 10,000 words, including ‘Deaflympics’, online banking’ and ‘carpooling’, that have been newly drafted into the digital dictionary of India’s non-voiced lexicon.

Developed and released by the Indian Sign Language Research and Training Centre (ISLRTC) in DVD form along with corresponding videos of signs for each word, this new visual dictionary makes for interesting viewing, especially in light of the International Day of Sign Languages, which, too, has earned its own official sign this year. Among the delights offered by the non-verbal vocabulary that now spans the gamut from technical terms such as ‘quadrupedal robots’ to academic abstractions such as ‘anti-trust policy’ is watching the interpreter’s face crumple into a frown while conveying ‘tight-fitting clothes’ and puff up while showing an ‘air mattress’. When the gesture for ‘tax’ is accompanied by a morose expression, speech seems redundant as a communication device.

It was to erase communication barriers between deaf people — 18 million according to estimates — and hearing communities that ISLRTC launched the first Indian Sign Language Dictionary of 3,000 terms in 2018.

“When I was a deaf child, my special educators were not able to explain abstract philosophies because they never knew ISL. They used their spoken language to explain things that were abstract and they had found them challenging to teach,” recalls Sunil Sahasrabudhe, vice-president of the All-India Federation of the Deaf.

Sahasrabuddhe finds the new ISL dictionary “long overdue” as someone who has taught English literacy to deaf kids in schools and to young deaf adults in NGOs, besides several ISL teachers (deaf) and ISL interpreters. “ISL vocabulary is not and never will be limited. It can keep growing when deaf people interact and engage with different concepts,” says Sahasrabudhe in an email interview.

While the lockdown interfered with crucial vocabulary-building in-person meetups of deaf persons, the use of masks made navigating everyday tasks such as buying vegetables tricky for the deaf members who rely on lip-reading. “If hearing individuals would learn basic sign language, then such difficulties can be easily prevented,” feels Mansi Shah of Indian Signing Hands, which runs an online news channel for the deaf community.

So far, 142 different sign languages have been studied around the world. The dictionary model to aspire to, according to city-based interpreter Neeta Mukherji, is the Finnish Sign Language Dictionary. Apart from a digital video version, it comes with a bulky print version where signs are explained with a lot of diagrams. Even as she waits for the print version of ISLRTC’s DVD dictionary, Mukherji, who interprets Marathi through sign language at a school for the deaf in Thane, uses an Indo-Pak Sign Language dictionary that had come out of Coimbatore a few years ago. Replete with economic and scientific terms, tenses and even some regional variations in dialect, this book tends to be her go-to recommendation for someone new to the mechanics of the non-voiced language.

Kunal Guha (MUMBAI MIRROR; August 3, 2014)

Relative Value Shobhana (65), Punit (30) and Mansi (30)

When Mumbai got its first Hard Rock Cafe, the standard direction to the venue was, 'take the left from Deepak Talkies'.

In the last two decades, the single-screen with a history spanning 80 years was reduced to little more than a landmark. That was until February this year, when heir to the movie hall, Punit Shah and wife Mansi metamorphosed it in an attempt to diversify their audience base from the all-male-front bencher demographic. The 30-year-old's great grandfather, Tokershi Jivraj Shah was a trader who owned land in Sewri and Lower Parel back in the '20s. The plot where Deepak Talkies stands today was bought from a church in 1926, says Punit, who found an old floor plan of the area which suggests that a butcher's shop used to stand where the entrance currently sits.

Before screening films, the venue hosted live performances, circus shows and English plays. "He envisioned an entertainment space inspired by his travels to London, which he frequented as a merchant," says Punit. Deepak became a movie theatre only in the late '30s and screened silent films before the talkies era began.

Years later, Punit's father, Sahadev Deraj Shah, then barely 20, took over in 1958. His contribution was to add the balcony section. "It's where I first met him," remembers Shobhana, Punit's mother, speaking of her late husband. "I accompanied a school friend for a special preview of Gumnaam. It was a scary suspense film and the show started post midnight." Soon, she was joining her husband for special previews at Eros, Liberty and Nehru Planetarium. "He was associated with the Censor Board, so he had to watch almost every film," she adds. Although she turned manager of the theatre, after his death in 1998, Shobhana takes little credit, and has fewer complaints. And she never considered getting the monkey off her back despite some shows going empty. In fact, she admits candidly, she didn't think Punit would take over since he had an MBA and was interested in a career in real estate.

Like Punit, who with his interior designer wife has masterminded Deepak's new life, his father too strived to experiment with innovation, including introducing Dolby sound in the early 90s. "Regal and Deepak were the only ones to," she claims. The visionary, remembers Shobhana, had brought a VCR to India from one of his trips abroad. "This was before VCRs became common-stay in India. Even Jaya Bachchan would borrow our VCR and VHS cassettes of English films," she smiles.

Despite being a cinema owner's son, Punit's friends rarely cashed in with a free show. "I was at Bombay Scottish, and most of my classmates preferred watching English films which we didn't screen," he says, when his mother interrupts him: "But we organised free shows for his entire school a couple of times."

Like most single-screens in Mumbai, Deepak's downfall began in early 2000 with the advent of multiplexes. Comfier seats, flavoured popcorn and the option of picking from a range of films lured audiences away. "Last year, Mansi came up with a plan to redesign the theatre, and we were happy to back her," Punit says of his wife who first watched a film at the family theatre when 3 Idiots released.

Her plan was ambitious and littered with restraints. "I had to retain the regal look and introduce beautification without breaking anything down," explains Mansi, who chose red and black for the seats, and cut their number down by 25 % to allow for more leg space. Civil work for cracked walls, a paint job for the entire auditorium and polishing the wooden roof at the entrance were mundane compared to the challenge a critical pillar at the entrance posed. "It had given way and we wanted an identical one made. My carpenters had to chisel one out from scratch," she says, adding that the grand cylinder cost them Rs 80,000. "But what we spent most generously," Punit laughs, "were our brains."

Cosmetic changes had to be accompanied by first-rate service including online booking, valet parking, a canteen stocked with multiplex eats, air-conditioning and shows dedicated to foreign classics.

Currently hosting the Matterden Centre for Films and Creations, an initiative of the Enlighten Film Society, it will screen Citizen Kane, Metropolis, Rashomon and Roman Holiday. "Cinema goers today are willing to pay for facilities offered," Shobhana says, although for her the old-time samosa will always be a favourite.

THE PLOT BEFORE DEEPAK

Tokershi Jivraj Shah, a trader and landlord, bought the plot where Deepak Talkies stands today from a church in 1926. An old floor plan revealed that a butcher's shop stood where the entrance is located.\

Sharmila Ganesan-Ram | TNN (THE TIMES OF INDIA; March 9, 2014)

One of the 500 new, red chairs at Lower Parel’s Deepak Talkies is baring its yellow flesh. There is a clean, surgical cut down its middle, a stab Punit Shah felt in his gut when he realised the culprits were two teenagers. They had left the movie hall midway, hands quaking, not out of guilt so much as, perhaps, drug use. It was to deter this very profile of patrons that Shah spent the last nine months sterilising his grandfather’s cinema with air-conditioners, toilet cleaners, recliners, RTIs and other cleansers that together cost him almost as much as a multiplex. His labour pains, however, are yet to fully pay off.

On Valentine’s Day this year, 85-year-old Deepak— one of the oldest cinemas in Mumbai—reopened after nine months, in a new avatar. In place of shutters that would let in a row of rickshaw drivers, construction workers and others for as low as Rs 30, it now boasts two huge black gates that open only slightly and tentatively for those who can pay at least Rs 110. On the gates is a set of rules and the picture of the new, red, reclining, cushioned chair. Inside, there are uniformed security guards who ask for your name in English, toilets with self-locking doors, popcorn that comes from Argentina and high-end amplifiers that make Shah’s office floor shudder every time there’s a thud in the movie.

“I want Deepak to cater to the elite class,” says Punit, the third-generation owner of the theatre that was started by Kutchi land-owner Tokershi Jivraj Ganji in 1926. Besides sentiment, it was partly a 1981 law that says that even if the owner of a cinema theatre revamps it, he can only use it for the purpose of a cinema— that prompted Punit to refurbish the theatre. “I want to offer people a Prithvi theatre-like ambience where they can come in and play the guitar,” says the 30-year-old, who has been careful to hold on to the colonial structure and its various welcoming elements— the long, roofed walk-in, ornate lamps, elegant benches, and most importantly, two huge white stone elephants that stand facing each other, a bit like the logo of this paper.

These are reminders of Deepak’s inception as a circus venue. In the 1920s, the two rear entrances of this cinema would see lions and tigers from the Byculla zoo. Then, when the cinema projector arrived, films were screened chiefly for workers from nearby mills. As mills closed, crowds thinned. The cinema— that has seen everyone from actors Salman Khan to Govinda walk down its porch— soon became what theatre managers used to call “a shifting theatre”. This means that some films would release here only after finishing their run elsewhere, “just to show a silver jubilee run”.

“The ladies’ toilets previously had open latrines, like the gents’,” recalls Punit’s wife, Mansi, amused. “Besides, the doors wouldn’t close so there were people peeping in.” An interior decorator, she took on the onus of redesigning the insides of this family heirloom. It wasn’t easy. “When we broke the POP ceiling of the auditorium, I could see the sky,” recalls Mansi. Nine months later, the theatre now has classy toilets with mirrors, a high-defintion screen, twelve amplifiers (in place of five) and a 2K digital projector. “Basically you will find everything that you find at a multiplex, at subsidized prices,” says Punit.

Few days into reopening, however, it still had the aura of a circus venue. Punit had to deal with the wrath of its erstwhile patrons. Some protested its new richness by breaking its glass box office window while others avenged the loss of affordable entertainment by watching films here. “Local goons would bring tobacco packs and cigarettes inside,” says Punit, one eye on the office TV which plays footage from nine CCTV cameras.

These teething troubles, thankfully, are now over. Corporates have now been requesting him to lend his space for seminars. Some of them promised group bookings for certain Hindi and English films. Last Sunday, a group of 60 Maharashtrian women turned up with their families to watch the Marathi film Fandry. “Their kids even pulled the elephant’s tail,” recalls Mansi. The Shahs are now planning to introduce a ladder so kids can mount the elephants. Just like circus artists once used to.