“I often say Yakut Mahal is not just a theatre. It is a piece of Hyderabad’s history that travelled from the Nawabs to film lovers and finally into our family’s hands.

The story began long before I was born. In the late 1930s, Nawab Jafar Nawaz Jung built Yakut Mahal with a vision ahead of its time. The theatre houses Peerless Magnarc high-intensity carbon-arc projectors, manufactured in Chicago by J. E. Maculey Mfg. Co. in 1927.

These machines arrived here in the late 1930s and still remain in our projection room today. They have lit black-and-white films, early talkies, colour cinema and even modern prints with a steadiness that still surprises us.

People say Hyderabad’s culture lives in its lanes. I believe it lived inside this hall. Cinema was a gathering, a celebration, a weekly ritual for families. Crowds lined up for Dilip Kumar in Devdas, for Raj Kapoor’s classics, Dharmendra’s action films, Senior NTR and ANR’s mythological dramas, and later the Amitabh Bachchan era that filled halls across the country. When films like Sholay, Zanjeer, Deewaar or Devdas were screened, queues stretched well beyond the entrance.

Yakut Mahal came into our family when my father, Mohd Abdul Salaam Sharfan Sahab, purchased it in the early 2000s. He believed places like this should not disappear. Even when renovations were needed, he made sure the original character stayed untouched. Today, my brother and I look after everything. Running a single screen now is not business; it is a responsibility to the city’s memory.

Multiplexes rose and many old single-screen theatres closed, but Yakut Mahal remained because people kept returning. Some visitors walk in saying their grandparents saw their first film here. Others come simply to see the projectors. Many come because they want to feel what cinema once was.

When I switch on these old projectors, the light cuts across the hall exactly as it must have decades ago. In that beam, I feel the presence of every generation that sat here before us. As long as these walls stand, Yakut Mahal will continue to hold a part of Hyderabad’s cinema history.”

— M. A Lateef Sharfan, Proprietor, Yakut Mahal, Hyderabad