I remember how our teachers would ask us to stand in a line and count out loud to prepare us for our movie outings in our boarding school in Dehradun. I was in class 5 and just 10 years old and had already watched more movies than the other 10 year olds in my hometown. Our boarding school would show us a movie every week, exposing us to regional cinema, international cinema and the most popular – Bollywood. While they would play the weekly movie on a big projector screen in a hall at night after dinner, they would take us out to cinema halls once every few months to show us the popular much-awaited releases.
At that time, there were only two or three decent single-screen cinema halls in Dehradun which were owned by generational families of the valley. These halls were the only cinema halls our boarding school would take us to, depending upon the availability of seats. We would be excited to travel to the cinema hall and would sing songs from the movie on the way.
As we grew up, our boarding school also changed its rules and we were given more freedom in class 11 and 12. Now, we could pick the movies we wanted to watch and could also pick the movie theatre we wanted to go to. As we would go out in small groups of 5-10 children, it became easier to book tickets and plan our outing schedule. By then, old movie theatres were on the verge of shutting down and new multiple-screen movie theatres were gaining popularity.
A few new malls opened their doors to the public and offered us the chance to visit a multiple-screen movie theatre for the first time. That is when the extremely popular Pacific Mall made its way to the city and brought the PVR movie experience with it. The mall gained immense popularity in a surprisingly short span of time and became the most popular spot for movie outings. Now, whenever you hear “Pacific Dehradun”, you automatically think of Pacific Mall, Pacific Hills or Pacific Golf Estate, all three projects being owned and managed by the same corporation that is behind the success of Pacific Mall, Dehradun.