It is a truism-and a cliché-that many time periods live alongside each other in India. But for those of us who have a clear memory of 1997, it feels like that was a particularly strange, transitional time. Most city-dwellers were encountering the internet for the first time, via noisy dial-up connections. Quaint pagers were making way for bulky 'mobile phones! Just a few years into economic liberalization, there was much promise of glitzy consumerist things to come (such as First World-level malls), but the execution was slow. The country's first multiplex did open in south Delhi's Saket that year, promising to glamorize the big-screen experience; and yet, just a few kilometres away, a much older single-screen hall-poorly maintained and lacking basic safety procedures-was about to see a grisly tragedy unfold.
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